


A Blue So Deep It's Black

by NuMo



Series: Amazons & Artifacts [1]
Category: Warehouse 13, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, HG in Warehouse 12 times, No Bering and Wells, pre-Warehouse 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-02-26 06:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13229523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: A dejected Helena Wells, still reeling from the death of her daughter months ago, finds herself on Themyscira and encounters a young princess whose facial features and sincere earnestness tug at her heartstrings.





	1. Prologue & Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, this fic sprang from my thought, upon watching Wonder Woman, that the actress who plays young Diana looks similar to the actress who played Christina Wells in Warehouse 13. Sometimes plot bunnies are created by the weirdest of thoughts. And then they develop into multi-chapter stories! 
> 
> I know very little Wonder Woman/Amazons canon beyond what we see in the movie. I took my liberties with what I saw there, and with what I researched online. I learned that comic book creators do it, so I thought I'd do it too. ;) 
> 
> Enjoy! 
> 
> As always, feedback is very welcome! Many thanks to my lovely beta Faerirose!

**Prologue**

The Mediterranean. From above, it’s a myriad of colors and textures, especially on a sunny day. Blue turns turquoise turns beige where water meets earth. Smoothness turns choppy turns torn where water meets air. In some places, cool liquid turns to hissing steam where water meets fire. 

But those places, while doubtlessly fascinating, are not the places on which this story centers.

This story centers on a place somewhere southeast in that body of water, and as far as directions go, ‘somewhere southeast’ is the best description you will get. 

This place is surrounded by eternal fog. Compasses will not work here. Sailors have long learned to steer clear. In fact, any compass that goes haywire, any fog that crops up within a hundred nautical miles of this general area will cause sailors to turn their ship around immediately – against the captain’s will, without the captain entirely, if necessary.

You see, they think the fog kills. Certainly not a single ship that has gone into it has come out again to tell the tale. 

Of course that is all superstition.

-_-_-

There is a rumor among a certain kind of people. 

The rumor says that when fog crops up any compasses go haywire in a certain area of the Mediterranean, you are very close to Paradise. Close to a place where a certain kind of people can walk tall and free, where they won’t be shut up or talked over or beaten or worse. 

But of course, the older or more cynical ones of this kind of people will say, of course this place is in the middle of the sea, somewhere that our kind of people can’t get to in the first place. Cherish your dreams, the kinder ones will tell the dreamers. They’re all you’ll ever have.

Among the dreamers, among the more hopeful ones – or more deluded, as the others will call them – of this kind of people, stories circulate about an island of women and no men, an island of women warriors, women blacksmiths, women farmers, women healers, women rulers.

This rumor will never reach the ears of any man. Men are not the kind of people who would keep a secret like that secret, and the kind of people who know about this secret are well aware of that.

Not all women know about this rumor either, for there are some women who will conspire with men to keep other women down, and the kind of women who know about this rumor are well aware of that, too.

Of course that is all a rumor.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

The mission was not going too well, Helena thought as the sailors closed in on her. Granted, it had had only slim chances of success from the outset. Granted, in the black mood that she had been in, that had been a reason for her to volunteer. But now that push was coming to shove quite literally, she realized that she had no intention of dying out here in the middle of the Mediterranean. 

The Warehouse had sought an agent to go to Greece and retrieve the Antikynthera Mechanism – or swap it, rather. Helena argued that she spoke Greek (which was true), that she could employ subterfuge and feminine wiles better than her colleagues (which was true), that museum guards and officials were more inclined to let a female intruder talk her way out of things than a male one (which was true), and that she was more adept at picking locks than any of the male agents (which might or might not have been true, she did not know; but that did not stop her from claiming it). And so she had been sent out with a replica of the wretched object, some money, some men’s clothes and papers, and a Tesla. 

She lost the Tesla. She lost the replica. She certainly lost the papers, and the money. She barely escaped Athens with her life to be exact, but then again she was not exactly focused, at least not on retrieving the Mechanism. 

No, her reason for visiting Athens was much more personal – an attempt to find out more about Warehouse 1, to find out if there were any artifacts still around that might help her revive her Christina. She had exhausted everything that Warehouse 12 had to offer months ago; she had started to spread her nets further after that – and where better to begin than at the beginning? So, weeks before the Antikynthera Retrieval was announced, she had dived into the ancient files, had perfected both her ancient and her modern Greek and acquired some ancient Macedonian in order to find out as much as she could about the Warehouse’s origin.

Warehouse 1 had been in Pella, Alexander the Great’s capital. So when she arrived in Athens as per Warehouse 12 orders, she sent Caturanga a telegram saying so, and promptly got on another ship, this one sailing north. 

And she found nothing. Hours had turned into days had turned into weeks, and she found _nothing_. After a few too close calls with the local authorities, Helena decided to strike her sails and revive her original mission, if only to have something to show for when she returned to London, but it seemed that her luck had run out completely. 

Here she was in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a group of sailors swinging weapons or fists. She had talked her way aboard as ship’s boy, knowing that she could not afford the fee of passage to Italy, much less London, knowing that she could not afford to be discovered. Which had, inevitably, happened. She sighed as the sailors made their way towards her. 

Even before she had set out from London, she had entertained the thought that she might not come back, that some catastrophic event might take her life. Part of her welcomed the idea – probably some long-buried part that still believed in the religious teachings of her parents, a part that believed that she would be reunited with any pre-deceased loved ones in the afterlife. Her mouth curled at the idea that part of her might have expected to see Christina again in Paradise, or Limbo, or wherever death would take her. A much larger part of her simply wanted to be done. She had no purpose beyond bringing her daughter back from the dead, and in her more lucid moments, she suspected that that errand was pointless. She might work in a place where miracles happened, but this particular miracle seemed restricted to mystic heroes and divine beings or heroes of antiquity. Not artifacts. At least none that she had found. 

Even when she awoke this morning, the random, abstract idea of the gray, silent waters behind her becoming her final resting place had not concerned Helena too much. Even now, as the sailors advanced on her with hands outstretched, the thought that they might get those hands on her body bothered her much more. She crouched, ready to defend herself – even if she were to die today, she would make them regret the day they had ever thought of attacking her. She had not been able to defend her daughter – but she had, in countless sleepless nights since Christina’s death, envisioned exactly how she would have fought her daughter’s attackers, and her hands were itching to put her ideas into action. 

And then an ominous sound made both her and the sailors stop dead in their tracks. It came again, a low, tortured wailing of metal – the ship’s steam engine was under strain. Too much strain? Helena’s mind shuddered at the thought. She knew what power was harnessed in the engine room. The captain rounded on his men and, in Greek, barked at two of them to see to the boiler immediately. They scrambled, in mortal fear of the look on the captain’s face, or their fates if they were unsuccessful, Helena did not know and did not care. She only cared that the ones that stayed behind looked equally scared, and were turning away from her. Helena agreed with the fear – an exploding steam engine would likely tear the ship apart and kill them all. 

And suddenly, there was fog. 

Overtaxed engine chugging, the ship plunged into it, deeper with every passing revolution of its propeller. Helena shivered in the sudden, sodden coolness.

„ _Magissa!_ ” one of the sailors shouted, pointing a trembling finger at Helena. 

„Witch!” the others took up the jeer. „She brought the Killing Fog! Witch! Kill her! Throw her overbo-”

The boiler exploded.


	2. Chapter 2

Her ears rang. Cold water numbed her senses. Helena sank like a stone. Dazedly, she watched air bubbles stream up from the sinking ship. Her breath decided to leave her and join them. Her eyes followed the glittering motion upwards on their own volition. They alighted on one of the sailors’ bodies, one leg torn clean off. They followed the body’s way down. It bounced into a piece of wreckage and slowly began to tumble. Then it was stopped by its scarf tangling with the debris. Then its momentum tore it loose again. Then large amounts of red and brown ooze mushroomed away from it. Mushroomed towards her.

Sickened, Helena kicked out to avoid the foul cloud. A host of bubbles left her mouth as she screamed out at the sudden pain. Looking down at her left leg, she saw red blooming out from her own calf, saw the blond of torn wood embedded deeply in the muscle.

 _This is not how I end.  
_  
She found herself kicking upwards with her right leg, found her arms fighting shock and numbness and the pull of the deep. Part of her watched bemused as her muscles strained, her lungs burned, both insisting that she had lingered too long. Whatever instinct was propelling her overruled them, though. When her head finally broke the water’s surface, her lungs pulled in a deep, gasping breath. And then she remembered the rumor. Maybe the cook had been chatting with the maid? No, it had been outside somewhere, in an alley or other dark place; the harbor, maybe. Whores talking among themselves? No matter, she thought as she looked around herself for anything that might help her stay afloat. It had been about fog, out of clear skies. Fog, in the middle of the Mediterranean. 

Fog was not witchcraft, despite what the superstitious sailors had cried before their vessel exploded. Fog was a natural phenomenon of air and water. And contrary to its London cousin, sea fog was no killer. Fog was something to be associated with land, was it not? Possibly even Paradise, according to that rumor. 

The back of Helena’s struggling hand hit something large and wooden, and she cursed at the new pain. Then she turned clumsily and pulled herself towards it, trying to find reprieve from the relentlessly sucking waves. A door, she realized, and clambered onto it fully, crying out when her left calf hit the wood. Now that she had found relative safety, her unhurt hand wandered down to the injury and her eyes took in the half-foot-long piece of wood that was deeply stuck in her muscle. Then her brain caught up with what she saw and prompted her to leave it be – chances were that the wood was stemming a much larger blood flow than what was currently coming forth.

Helena turned away from the sickening sight and hung her head for a long moment, trying to regain her breath and hold on to her breakfast. When she felt sufficiently steady, she raised her eyes and surveyed her surroundings. The sea was deceptively calm. She shook her head, wincing when the motion made her dizzy. To think that a ship this size could sink, in sea as still as this, in a matter of seconds! The only traces left behind, she saw, were the door she was huddled on and some other bits of flotsam. The fog surrounding the scene made things seem even more surreal. Here she was, stuck in the middle of the Med on a door. Possibly death by drowning would have been preferable to death by dehydration. Life to thirst another day? She chucked weakly and raised one hand to where her head still smarted, back behind her left ear. It came away bloody – stuck in the middle of the Med on a door, with a gash in her head and a splinter in her leg, she updated her mental inventory, disregarding scraped knuckles as rather meaningless in context. She did not shake her head again, however much she wanted to.

She rotated it instead – if more slowly this time – trying to get a sense of her surroundings. Was that a rock? The rumor began its murmuration again. Helena’s eyes narrowed, and she clumsily laid down flat on the door and attempted to paddle closer, wincing when the sea water lapped at her gouged skin. There should not be rocks here, should there? This _was_ the middle of the sea, hundreds of fathoms deep according to the charts. And yet white rock rose in front of her, undeniably solid, undeniably present. She sat up again, eyes straining to get a glimpse of anything but gray fog and white rock. Was that blue sky over there? Larger rocks? An island?

If the charts were true, Helena was hundreds of miles from any coast, and, given the nature of the ship she had been on, probably dozens of miles from any major shipping route. 

If the rumors were true, she was close to Paradise. 

And then a wave washed the door she was on too close to the rock and knocked it sideways. The motion bumped it against Helena’s pierced leg, and she flinched, further upsetting the unstable balance. Although Helena tried to crouch low and cling to the door to stabilize it, the waves would not be denied their plaything, pushing and twisting the door against the rock again and again until it overturned. Pain bloomed as cold water washed over Helena once more. Then a sharp whack to her head sent her into blackness.


	3. Chapter 3

Helena awoke with a groan and raised her hand towards her head. Even that movement set off a dizziness that made her heave. Feeling weak as a kitten, she did not fight off the strong hands that helped her turn and vomit. 

When she was done, those hands still supported her head to keep it from lolling. Helena realized that whoever it had been who had helped her was talking to her in a language that sounded vaguely like Greek, but much more like something she could not understand. Frowning, Helena struggled to open her eyes, wincing when the gesture woke a tugging pain over and behind her ear. She heard the sound of a small tinkling bell close by. Then her care-giver spoke up again.

“Românesc? Italiano? English? Gàidhlig?” It was a female voice, friendly and a bit worried. Young. Helena tried to speak up at the mention of ‘English’, but her tongue would not heed her. Her care-giver obviously noticed, though. „English, yes?” Helena gave the barest of nods, knowing that with one hand still cupping her head, the other woman would feel it. „Good. You are safe, but you were badly hurt, and you are feeling the effects of that still. My name is Diana. Epione and the other healers have cleaned and dressed your wounds, but they have said that you might feel sick from all the sea water you have swallowed. I will now set your head back on your bed; Epione also said that you should stay lying down for a while longer.” Helena felt her head sink slightly into a pillow, then the hand vanished, only to reappear grasping her own fingers. „It was I who rescued you off that rock,” the voice added, „and I feel responsible for your well-being.”

At this, Helena roused slightly. A woman had saved her? This was a woman she had to see. Drawing a deep breath, she willed her eyes to open. The light was dim, and her eyes would only show her a blurred image of the face of the person sitting next to her bed, but the general outline… Helena blinked. An oval face, framed by soft-falling, dark brown curls. A friendly, if slightly worried smile. Solicitous brown eyes. Helena’s fingers curled around the hand that held them, holding on for dear life. „Chris-” she began. Her mouth felt full of cotton wool which turned to ashes when she realized that this could not possibly be her daughter. The voice was young, but that of an adult; the accent was decidedly not British; the height of the face suggested a fully grown person; and the fingers that held hers were friendly, not familiar. 

Helena blinked again, and the face of her rescuer swam into sharper focus. It did not help – Diana looked so close to how Helena imagined her Christina might look when she grew up, so close that Helena could not stop a sob, could not stop her stomach from churning again. It had been smiling, that face, but now its expression fell, turned to worry and concern – just as Christina would have looked when she had seen someone struggle.

„Do you feel unwell?” Diana said, and added, in a reassuring voice, „A healer will be here in a moment.”

Taking another deep breath, Helena fought to calm her emotions. A detail of Diana’s attire caught her attention – the young woman wore something that looked very much like… leather body armor? And what had she meant, ‘healer?’ Had she mentioned another woman’s name earlier? Wondering at these puzzle pieces helped Helena regain her composure. „I… am fine,” she managed after a moment. 

One eyebrow of Diana’s came up in amusement. Then the woman’s brown eyes landed on something on the floor at Diana’s feet. „The vomit in the wash basin contests your claim,” she said lightly.

Helena groaned and closed her eyes. Again, pain tugged at the edges of her frown, and she remembered that there had been an explosion, and that something had hit her head. _Ship’s engine,_ her memories supplied. _I was on a ship on my way home, and then its engine exploded._

A new voice chuckled from the doorway. „You show the same spirit as most of the Amazons,” a woman said as she walked into the room. „So many of them are ‘fine’ until you look closer and see a broken bone breaking through their skin. And then they’ll claim it’s but a flesh wound. Thank you for alerting me that our visitor has awoken, Diana.”

Diana let go of Helena’s hand and rose. „This is Epione, our master healer,” she said, stepping aside for the other woman. Helena thought she looked slightly Asian – possibly of mixed heritage? It was not unheard of in London – but this was not London, she suddenly realized. It could not be. A female medical practitioner – or at least Diana claimed as much. Just as Helena had willed her eyes to open, she now willed her thoughts to operate faster. 

„Helena Wells,” she replied, gingerly inclining her head. „Please allow me to thank you for healing me.”

“It is my duty, my task, and my honor to help the ill and injured,” Epione replied solemnly, setting a glass and a jug on Helena’s bedside table. She took Helena’s wrist to check her pulse, and nodded after a while. “Fast, but strong and regular. Good. How do you feel, Helena Wells? Answer honestly this time, for a healer needs the full truth.”

Helena hesitated, taking stock. Memories of what happened after the explosion came back in sickening detail, and she swallowed a couple of times, unwilling to add more to the contents of the wash basin. “There’s some pain in my leg – much less than I’d expect,” she said finally. “My head hurts both inside and out. I feel slightly queasy, and somewhat lightheaded. A contusion, I suppose.” She recognized the symptoms – most Warehouse agents would. “What happened?” she added. “And where am I?”

Epione nodded. “I concur with your diagnosis,” she said, ignoring Helena’s questions. “I assume you are also aware that you ingested a lot of sea water, and need to go easy for a few days?” When Helena nodded, the healer peered at her with a tilt to her head, “Do you think you could stomach food or water?”

The thought of eating made Helena grimace. She knew, though, that she needed to drink, even more than she needed food. And even though she did not feel particularly cold, she knew that immersion in sea water lowered the body’s temperature. “I would not say no to a hot cup of tea,” she replied therefore. 

Diana raised her eyebrows. “Tea?” she replied with a slightly incredulous smile. 

“Which kind?” Epione asked, ignoring Diana’s surprise.

“Darjeeling if you have it, or Assam,” Helena told her indifferently. “Really, in a pinch any kind would do.” She realized she was looking forward to something warm, even if it was tea and not something more sustaining. She did not even care about cream or sugar.

Diana exchanged a puzzled look with Epione. “I’ve never heard of plants of that name,” she said, and Epione shook her head as well. 

This, in turn, caused Helena’s eyebrows to rise. “You don’t…” She stared at the two women. “Where on _Earth_ am I, that you don’t know Darjeeling or Assam?!” She bit her lip to keep herself from directing a more personal question at Epione. If the healer was of Asian descent, how could she not know tea? Then again, Darjeeling and Assam were Indian in origin, and Epione’s looks were East Asian. But that was where tea was from, was it not?

Again, the two other women exchanged a look. Then, “Themyscira,” said Diana. 

Helena narrowed her eyes. A headache was developing in her left temple. “I’ve never heard of a place of that name,” she said.

“Then we are even,” Diana cut in with a grin that caused Helena to roll her eyes. 

“Which country does Therm-” Helena stopped, trying to recall the name correctly. It had sounded Greek, and the language Diana had originally spoken had also sounded Greek. Greece had about a million islands, and just as many regional dialects. Then again, Ottoman Turks also claimed parts of the Aegean Sea.

“Themyscira,” Epione provided. “And we are not part of any country.”

“It’s the home of the Amazons,” Diana added. 

Helena blinked rapidly several times. Then recollection raised a card in her mind. “Paradise Island…” she breathed. “It really does exist, then?”

Epione spread her arms wordlessly, her gesture encompassing the room, the three women in it, and probably everything outside the door and windows as well. 

With a deep breath, Helena relaxed a little into her pillow. “I guess that explains why you haven’t heard of tea, then.”

“Oh, we know tea,” Diana protested immediately. “Chamomile, mint, rosehip, linden…” she began to list.

“Oh, _herbals_.” 

Epione laughed out loud at Helena’s unmistakable disdain. “You sound like any Amazon when I suggest a day of rest. You speak of black tea, don’t you?” When Helena nodded hopefully, Epione shook her head with a sad smile. “My mother spoke of it often. We do not have it here, so I can’t offer you what you desire.” She nodded towards Helena’s bedside table. “Will some water do for now?” she asked.

“Splendidly, thank you,” Helena replied, remembering her manners. 

As Epione filled a glass, Diana stretched out a hand. “Let me help you sit.” 

Helena clasped it, hoping that her own hand would prove steady enough to drink on her own. 

It did. 

“I’ll leave the jug here, and bring more water with supper,” Epione announced when Helena had emptied the glass. The healer refilled it and left both jug and glass on the small table. “Don’t drink too quickly, though, or you might be sick again. I’ll send someone with a new wash basin as well.” Epione bent to retrieve the item. When she rose again, she indicated a little bronze bell that sat on the bedside table. Helena remembered hearing it, and knew how Epione had known to come. “If you need help, call for me or Althea, or ring this bell.”

“I can stay,” Diana suggested quickly. 

“And I know why you want to,” Epione replied in an indulgent kind of voice. “What Helena Wells needs most, though, is rest, not your curiosity.”

“Oh, I-” Helena’s refusal was cut short by a yawn that attacked her out of nowhere. 

Epione and Diana laughed, and after a moment, Helena rolled her eyes and smirked, defeated by her treacherous body. 

“You can return tomorrow morning,” Epione said to Diana. “I’m sure your mother wants to talk to you in any case.”

Diana ducked her head, if only slightly. “You’re right,” she told Epione. “I simply wanted to wait until I could report that Helena Wells had reawakened.” Then her face lit up. “I’ll notify Siruya. Not,” she added quickly when Epione opened her mouth, “to come and talk to Helena Wells, but to send down a runner with something to read.” The smile she directed at Helena made the Englishwoman’s heart ache yet again with its artlessness. “Something to read might occupy your mind, in case you cannot sleep.”

“I’d be grateful, yes,” Helena answered. “Oh, and – simply Helena will be fine,” she added. “Wells is my last name, and doesn’t need to be used every time.”

“Ah, yes. I’ve heard of this custom,” Diana nodded with more enthusiasm than Helena thought her statement warranted. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Helena.”

“I look forward to it,” Helena said and returned Diana’s renewed smile with one of her own.

-_-_-

“Siruya! Siruya!” Diana called out as she ran up the steps to the chronicler’s office. She knocked and barely waited for acknowledgement from inside before she stormed through the door. “I need your help.”

“Slow down, slow down!” Siruya laughed. “I do already know about the stranger’s arrival, you know.” Her eyes green-flecked gold under brown hair streaked with bronze from the sun, the tawny-skinned woman stood nearly as tall as Diana. The princess of Themyscira was not often seen in the archives – her kind of curiosity was seldom satisfied by reading another person’s account. Diana much preferred to find out things first-hand. Nevertheless, whenever the two of them had met, they had parted in mutual appreciation and friendship.

“Of course you do.” Diana felt slightly sheepish. Of course a runner would have been sent up to inform the chronicler. Any event was recorded, after all, and this one was more momentous than most.

“While I’ve been awaiting my queen’s orders as to how to proceed,” Siruya went on, “I’ve put together some general information for the stranger. Which language, or languages, does she speak, do you know?” The statuesque woman waved a hand towards a table on which several scrolls were neatly stacked.

“English,” Diana replied, smile back on her face as she realized how the chronicler’s actions conformed to her plan.

“English,” the chronicler repeated as she walked towards the table. “Hm.” She perused the scrolls for a moment and then picked one from near the bottom, taking care to not dislodge the rest. “This one is quite old – it has been centuries since someone came to us from England. Emmelina, the weaver,” Siruya elaborated before Diana could ask. “I hope the stranger will be able to read it. If not, tell her to send me a message with a list of languages that she _can_ read, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“And if she doesn’t know any other languages?”

Siruya smiled. “Then I’ll ask the queen to allow Emmelina and me to speak to her and explain Themyscira in person.”

Diana walked over to the table and leaned against it. Looking up from her feet, she searched Siruya’s face. Why would the queen have to allow the chronicler to speak with Helena? Time to ask the question she had come to ask. “Siruya, you know everything – how will things proceed? I was so small when the last outsider came to our shores. I don’t mean a human girl who fell in the sea,” she quickly amended, seeing Siruya open her mouth in disbelief. “I’ve been there when Thetis brings them to Themyscira, and I know we return them to the World of Man once they feel better. No, I mean an actual outsider, a grown person arriving here like this one did. I don’t remember what my mother and the senate do with them.”

“If they’re satisfied that the outsider is no threat, she is given the choice to remain or go back to the World of Man. Many have chosen to stay,” the chronicler lowered her eyes with a smile, “me among them.”

Diana gaped at her for a moment. Then her face split in a grin. “Siruya! I did not know that! Where are you from? What was your life like in Man’s World? Tell me everything!” 

Siruya laughed. “I was born in Assyria, but we don’t have the time for my story just now, my friend. I need to visit with the glassblowers; they have created a new technique for shaping that they’ve asked me to record. I will gladly answer your questions at a later time, though – will you come and join me for supper tomorrow?” When Diana nodded avidly, the chronicler smiled at her and went on, “As for your initial question: those who decide to leave are granted time to recuperate. Once they feel up to returning to the World of Man, the queen explains _Argion_ to them-”

“ _Argion_?” Diana interrupted, frowning. “I’ve never heard that name.”

“It’s our ship,” Siruya replied. “When the Amazons came to Themyscira, they remarked upon the fact that there was no possibility to get off the island and contact the World of Man if need be.”

“But why would-”

“Many argued,” Siruya went on across Diana’s interruption, unperturbed and with a smile, “that no one needed to do that in any case, so a ship was unnecessary.” Diana nodded again, wholeheartedly agreeing with the sentiment. “However, others maintained that an island that one had no way of leaving might as well be a dungeon, for it would be a jail in all but name. So Athena relented and helped the carpenters build _Argion_ , the only vessel able to leave Themyscira and return.”

Diana’s eyes were round. “Leave Themyscira…” she breathed. 

Siruya laughed softly. “No mischievous thoughts, Princess. _Argion_ is under the queen’s personal security and cannot be used without her knowledge and consent.”

Diana gave what she hoped was a very understanding and convincing nod. “How does it work, though?” she asked, and Siruya chuckled again. 

“I don’t know how, exactly. It is one of the secrets the queen keeps to herself. I simply know that an outsider can use _Argion_ to leave Themyscira and return to her homeland, even if she doesn’t know the first thing about sailing. And swiftly, too! _Argion_ is rarely gone for more than a few days. When the outsider disembarks on the shores of her homeland, _Argion_ will return to Themyscira on its own the following night.”

“So _Argion_ is the only ship that knows the way to Themyscira?”

Siruya inclined her head. “That’s one way of putting it, yes.”

Diana mulled this over for a while. Then she asked, “What if the outsider decides to stay?”

Siruya smiled brightly. “They are welcomed into the community of the Amazons. They pledge allegiance to the queen, the senate, and the laws of the Amazons. It is a beautiful, proud ceremony. Sometimes they have a personal sponsor; someone who vouches for them. Penelope, the archiver, was mine. But even if they haven’t found anyone with whom they have developed such a bond, they can take the oath – if the queen and the senate have declared them no threat.”

Diana’s face became somber. “But what if they _are_ a threat?” Then her expression turned to one of alarm. “What if they try to deceive the Amazons?”

“The Lasso of Hestia allows the wielder to find out the truth,” Siruya reassured the princess. “Any dangerous outsider will be held in prison until she changes her heart, or until she dies.”

“Dies!” Again, Diana’s eyes flew wide open. “Of course – outsiders are mortal.” She tilted her head, wanting and not wanting to ask Siruya the obvious next question. 

Siruya took pity on her. “Only until they start drinking Themyscira’s water,” she revealed. “It grants us longevity equal to any Amazon’s as long as we drink it. I assume Epione personally brought the outsider water today?”

 

“Yes!” Diana exclaimed with the memory. “It was in a kind of jug I had never seen before, with markings around its neck.”

Siruya nodded. “That is because it was drawn on one of the outlying islets,” the chronicler said. “The wells there give plain water – the water from the wells on Themyscira heals and gives eternal life.”

“As long as a person drinks it,” Diana repeated. 

“An outsider,” Siruya amended. “Amazons are immortal no matter what they drink.” She smiled at Diana. “Before you go to see your mother-” Diana grimaced – she had almost forgotten her orders to report to Hippolyta. “-tell me: what’s our guest’s name? I find it demeaning to have to speak of her as ‘the outsider.’ I would much rather call her by her name.”

“Oh! Her full name is Helena Wells,” Diana replied. “And she says that Wells is her last name and doesn’t need to be used all the time.”

Siruya nodded. “I’ve heard of that custom.” 

Diana laughed as the chronicler repeated Diana’s earlier words to Helena almost verbatim. “Thank you for explaining so much, Siruya,” she said. “I’m already looking forward to hearing your story tomorrow evening. When do you take your meal?”

“Usually at sunset. I’ll prepare a repast in my quarters.”

“I shall see you there. Oh!” Diana smiled widely. “I might already know a lot more about Helena Wells by then.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Helena Wells, you’ve been brought before me and the Senate to explain who you are and why you’re here,” Queen Hippolyta said. “You’re bound with the Lasso of Hestia, which will compel you to obey my commands and answer truthfully to my questions.”

 _Brilliant_ , Helena thought as she struggled against the bonds. Pain shot through her that had nothing to do with the dull throbbing in her calf or in her temple, and everything to do with the golden, _glowing_ rope that was wound around her shoulders. She could not suppress a grunt.

“It’s only painful if you struggle against it,” Queen Hippolyta added – a little too smugly, in Helena’s opinion. _An artifact_ , she thought. _Surely this is an artifact_. She did cease her wriggling and waited for the queen to start asking her questions. Hippolyta noticed, and inclined her head. “Who are you?” she began the interrogation.

Well, that was easy enough. “My name is Helena George Wells,” Helena replied.

“Tell me more about yourself.”

 _Ah. So that’s how this would play out._ “Such as?” Several of the other Amazons in the room tittered in displeasure, but Helena did not heed them.

Queen Hippolyta’s eyes were steely, all smugness gone from them. “Such as what your occupation is in the World of Man. What your intentions are towards us.”

“Before I arrived here, I did not know-” pain coursed through Helena, and she gasped. _So_ this _is how it works? Even something as vague as this?_ Time to test the properties of this Lasso, then. “I had only heard rumors of a place like this,” Helena corrected herself, and breathed a bit more easily when the pain lessened. _Interesting_. “I didn’t intend to come here before the ship I was traveling on exploded,” she continued, which was also true. “Thus, I have no intentions towards you. I would like to thank you all for saving my life,” she added as an afterthought. Diana and Epione were present as well; Diana standing at the queen’s elbow, Epione a bit further back. Helena tried to catch their eyes as she spoke, intending her thanks to reach both of them.

It was Queen Hippolyta who inclined her head in acknowledgement, though. “How did you come to be in this part of the world?” she asked next.

“I work for a-” Helena began before she could stop herself. _What on Earth-?_ _The Lasso_ , she realized. So the artifact did not just work on things she actively meant to say, but also compelled her to say things she might not want to say at all. _Oh that’s just splendid_ , she thought, then fought down another grunt as she tried to keep her mouth shut. _I wonder what its downside is._ Pondering the qualities of this artifact at least helped her keep the pain at bay. 

“I repeat, it is only painful if you struggle,” said the queen, well aware of what was going on by the sound of her voice.

“The Warehouse,” it burst out of Helena. “I work for the Warehouse. They sent m-” she had to break off again, doubling over and gasping. “They asked for a volunteer,” she corrected herself again, “to go to Athens, and I stepped forward.” Helena clamped her mouth firmly shut, breathing rapidly through her nose. She could feel sweat trickling down her back and legs, biting into the wound on her calf.

A murmuring was weaving through the assembled Amazons. “The Warehouse?” Diana asked.

“A place where dangerous artefacts are stored,” an older woman told her. She was smaller than the Queen, but had the same air of authority around her, and was clad in armor rather than fabric; armor that looked much more severe and businesslike than what Diana had worn when Helena had first seen her. A soldier? An officer, more likely. Was there a family resemblance between her, Diana and the queen? Helena shook her head to clear her thoughts. Why was she wondering about family resemblance when she should be questioning how these people knew about the Warehouse? “It was founded by Alexandros ho Mégas to host the artifacts that he found on his campaigns,” the woman continued. “A worthy endeavor, for these artifacts possessed powers that Man should not wield. I approve of keeping them hidden, and I welcome the knowledge that the Warehouse still exists.” The look she gave Helena was appraising. “And that they employ women now,” she added with a thin, triumphant smile. “Alexandros, of course, insisted on having only men guard the artefacts.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell me, Helena Wells – was it he who finally saw reason, or later guardians of the Warehouse?”

Helena almost laughed. Here she was, on Paradise Island, and not only had the Amazons heard of the Warehouse, but they were equality proponents. “I’m the only female agent,” she told the other woman. “And the Regents only suffer me because I am too good at what I do for them to end my employment.” She huffed. “You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, do you.”

The woman’s eyebrows came up sharply. “Is that so?” She sighed and shook her head, muttering under her breath.

“Antiope.” The queen raised a hand, and the other woman ceased her muttering. Then Queen Hippolyta turned to Helena again. “So you were sent to retrieve an artefact?”

“Yes,” Helena said. She wasn’t planning on volunteering more, but the Lasso had other ideas. “I also wanted to search for remnants of Alexandros’ original Warehouse,” it made her add before she could keep in the words.

Queen Hippolyta frowned. “Did you now,” she said slowly. “Why?”

Helena closed her eyes. The pain returned almost gently, this time. _Just tell them_ , it whispered. Helena shook her head. Christina was hers. Christina’s murder was her shame; Christina’s resurrection was her onus, hers alone. Needles of agony shot along her nerves, spreading from her bound shoulders through every fiber of her body. Helena gritted her teeth, adamant to keep this secret. Through her clenched jaws, a groan shook itself loose from her vocal chords. She shuddered as wave after wave of pain ran through her. Absentmindedly, she wondered if this would cause her wounds to re-open; they had healed remarkably quickly, but who knew what this Lasso did to people?

“Mother!” she heard Diana exclaim. Through eyes pulsing with pain, Helena saw the young Amazon walk past the queen. Diana put her hand on the Lasso, between her mother’s hand and Helena’s body. Instantly, the pain lessened. Then, turning to Helena, the Queen’s daughter asked, “Are your plans with Alexandros’ Warehouse or anything you might find in it intended or likely to bring harm to Themyscira or the Amazons?”

“No!” Helena replied immediately, slumping forwards. “No, they’re not.” She tried to catch her breath. From the corners of her eyes, she could see Antiope step between Diana and Hippolyta. After a terse and murmured exchange of words, Diana removed her hand from the Lasso. The young woman still looked outraged. _Not just inquisitive, but empathetic as well_ , Helena thought as she worked her jaw to loosen its muscles. The pain had not returned, which was a boon.

“Helena Wells,” Queen Hippolyta spoke up, “are any of your plans or actions in the World of Man intended or likely to bring us harm?”

Helena hesitated. “Your majesty, the scope of this question is so large – I don’t think that my life, so far, has been aimed at bringing harm to anyone, except in the course of my duty to the Warehouse. I have fought and will continue fighting people who steal or misuse artifacts, or people who impede or threaten agents when we retrieve an artifact. I will also, until my last breath, fight and oppose men who think that women should be allowed or forbidden to do things simply by virtue of being women. And I would do anything to save my daughter,” she added, and immediately cursed herself and the Lasso for letting her tongue run so far away.

“Your daughter?” the queen asked instantly. “You have a child?”

“I don’t see wh-” Helena began to protest, and stopped when pain coursed through her again. This time, she could not help but cry out.

“Mother, why-”

“A mother would do _anything_ for her child,” Queen Hippolyta announced in a voice of steel. “Helena Wells has just confessed that she would do anything for _her_ child. We cannot rule out-”

“Hippolyta,” Helena heard Antiope say. “Hippolyta, listen to yourself.” The small woman put her hand on the queen’s arm that held the Lasso. Unlike Diana’s hand on the Lasso itself, this did not lessen the pain in the slightest. Helena swayed and tried to concentrate on the two women’s interaction, knowing that its outcome was crucial.

The queen stared on the hand on her arm. Then her eyes wandered slowly to meet the other woman’s. “Remove your hand, general,” she said icily.

General Antiope met her stare head-on. Her hand remained where it was. “Helena Wells said she would do anything to save her daughter, my queen. To _save_ her. If someone threatened Diana, wouldn’t you do anything to save her? Wouldn’t you disregard any vows, any consequences? I agree with Helena Wells; the scope of the question is too large to be fair. And this _is_ a fair council.” The general took another step closer and, lowering her voice, told Hippolyta something that not even Helena could make out.

Helena knew the instant that the queen came around to the general’s plea, because the pain that had been racking her subsided all at once. “Epione,” the queen commanded.

The healer stepped forward. “Yes, my queen.”

“You have examined Helena Wells’ body,” the queen began, and Helena closed her eyes, grinding her teeth to keep tears of pain from spilling as tears of shame. She knew where this was going. “Have you seen evidence that this woman has been with child?”

“Yes, my queen.” The healer sounded unbothered by the question, and Helena concluded that there was no such thing as patient’s privacy on Themyscira. “There are stretch marks, but no signs of nursing. Helena Wells might not have carried her child to term.”

“Not every woman nurses, or is able to nurse,” a woman in the background spoke up. Helena barely heard her through the rushing noise in her head that had started when the healer had spoken of ‘not carried to term.’ “That is not counterevidence of motherhood.”

“That is true,” Helena heard Epione reply.

“Helena,” Diana spoke up. She walked up to Helena and dropped on one knee in front of her, bringing them to eye level. Helena almost laughed, almost sobbed, as the vision of Diana’s face superimposed itself on Christina’s face in her mind – both so similar in their openness, their empathy, their eagerness to help. “Do you have a daughter?”

The Amazon’s accent grated on Helena’s ears. She wanted to cover them, to not hear, only see. There was no pain, not anymore. Helena could still feel the Lasso around her shoulders, but there was no pain spreading from it. There was just Diana’s face in front of hers, Diana’s eyes which were so close to Christina’s in color, and so similar in expression.

A tear rolled down Helena’s cheek. “She is dead,” she told the princess roughly. “She was murdered, and I couldn’t help her, and I would do anything, _anything_ , to bring her back.” A brief spark of anger fought its way through the leaden bleakness that suddenly weighed Helena down. “I work in a place where miracles happen! And I couldn’t find anything that would bring her back. So I came to look for Warehouse 1, hoping I would find something there that would do the trick. I didn’t. So I decided to go home. I was on my way to London, the ship I was on sank, and I was washed ashore here. I have failed in everything I set out to do, and I don’t care what happens to me now.” Her last words had been a whisper, but the room was so silent that they echoed regardless. 

The Lasso went slack as Hippolyta’s hand dropped. Helena distantly noticed the change, her thoughts concentrated on the face in front of her. “I am so sorry,” Diana said softly.

-_-_-

Diana did not speak as she escorted Helena back to the Rooms of Healing. She had briefly looked at her mother when Helena had admitted that her daughter was dead. The look on her mother’s face had shaken Diana to her core. And while Diana brimmed with questions – what had Helena’s daughter been like? What had she had enjoyed? How, _why_ had she been murdered? – she knew better than to ask them.

Diana was glad that Epione had assigned Helena a private room for recuperation. As they entered the Rooms of Healing, Diana could feel that the Englishwoman wanted to be left alone more than anything else. Diana had been told that everyone had different ways of dealing with emotional upheaval, and that distancing oneself from others was one of them. But Helena Wells was new to Themyscira; she needed a friend. ‘Left alone,’ even if Helena wanted it, should not become ‘lonely,’ not if Diana could help it.

“If you seek company at any time, come and find me,” she told Helena as they turned towards the wing with the private rooms, and received a look that clearly asked ‘why would I do that?’ Diana shrugged and forged on, “I know some people like to be alone with their grief, but sometimes company is a good thing.” She had not liked Helena’s expression at the end of her interrogation. All the fight had gone out of the Englishwoman at the admittance of her daughter’s death and her impotence to do anything about it. It did not seem like a good frame of mind to leave someone alone in.

“And what would you know about it?” Helena replied, although her words sounded more perfunctory than aggressive.

“I do know grief,” Diana insisted as they made their way down the last corridor, Helena limping slightly from the prolonged strain that walking put on her injured calf. “We Amazons might be immortal, but that doesn’t mean that any living being on this island lives forever. And while a dog or a hawk or a horse might not be a human, love is love and grief is grief.” She stopped in front of Helena’s door.

Helena turned slightly and gave her a grimace that might have been meant to be a smile. “Where I come from, emotions aren’t expressed in public.” She opened the door and stepped inside.

“But… we are not in public?” Diana asked, perplexed, lingering in the doorway.

This got a semblance of a chuckle. “Let me replace ‘in public’ with ‘outwardly,’ then,” Helena replied, sounding patient – or tired. The Englishwoman held herself straight as a tree, and Diana admired her willpower. She realized that Helena needed rest, but the woman would not even sit down, not even lean against the door frame. The fight might have gone out of her, but she obviously still had pride to cling to.

The realization birthed another. “Emotions are seen as weakness?” Diana inquired, and sure enough, Helena nodded. Diana took a deep breath. “But-” And then she stopped herself. Helena did not look like she would enjoy disputation of this topic at this time. Helena did, in fact, look like she was one smidgeon of willpower away from sinking bonelessly to the floor. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Diana said carefully. “And I would like to repeat that if you wish for company, even just sitting together, you can come and find me at any time.” She rolled her eyes a little and smiled. “Anyone you find around here will be able to tell you where I live,” she added.

Helena nodded. “I shall keep it in mind,” she said, and Diana knew a dismissal when she heard one.


	5. Chapter 5

Helena looked up when there was a knock on her door a few days later. “Come in,” courtesy made her call half-heartedly before she could stop herself. Besides, it might be one of the healers coming at an unusual time of day.

“Good morning, Helena Wells,” a tall woman, looking Persian or Arabic, said as she opened Helena’s door and stood in the doorway. She was wearing a brightly colored garment rich in shades of red, orange, and purple. Helena remembered seeing a woman clad like that at the interrogation, in one of the back rows. Had it been this woman, or another in similar clothing? “My name is Siruya,” the woman said. “It was I who sent you this.” Her voice sounded vaguely familiar. Was this the same woman who had pointed out that nursing and motherhood were not necessarily related? While Helena tried to remember, the woman pointed towards the scroll on Helena’s table with a smile. “I see you’ve been perusing it – was it of any interest to you?”

Good manners made Helena sit up a little straighter and smile apologetically. “I’m afraid that upon opening it and encountering Middle English I lost my motivation to study it.” The runner who had brought the scroll had told Helena that it contained information on Themyscira, provided so that she would understand where she had landed. Once upon a time, Helena might have burned with curiosity about this island of only women, an island not charted on any map, an island unknown to the rest of the world. Once upon a time, she would have jumped at the chance of talking with someone who had come to Paradise Island in Chaucer’s time. But ever since the interrogation, she could not find it within herself to care about these things. The healers came and went and brought her food and water and examined her and changed the dressing on her wounds and tutted about her recuperation and asked her how she felt, as though she could ever feel anything but hollow anymore. 

It was out of the question to tell them that, of course. Just as it was out of the question, even if Helena had found the energy, to seek out Diana and take her up on her offer of company, or this Emmelina and her offer of Middle English. Helena got by on automated, usually monosyllabic, responses, hoping that her otherness would deter any pressing inquiries. Her reply to Siruya’s question had been the longest sentence she had formed in days.

“Ah, I understand,” Siruya replied. “I apologize; translating or updating these scrolls isn’t my highest priority. May I come in?”

Helena almost shrugged, but her manners transformed the motion into an inviting gesture towards the chair on the other side of the table. Her lips smiled at Siruya as the woman walked over and sat down.

“I am the chronicler of the Amazons,” Siruya said after she had settled. “As such, I am here because I would like to speak with you, our newest guest.”

Almost involuntarily, Helena raised an eyebrow. “I thought that everything important about me had already been determined at my hearing,” she said. If the other woman was a chronicler, it probably _had_ been her in that back row.

Siruya inclined her head, acknowledging the edge in Helena’s voice. “Hardly,” she said simply. “Any person is much more than can be determined in a few minutes of interrogation.”

“And so you come to me now, three days later, to question me some more?” Helena felt irritated more than anything. She simply wanted to be left alone.

Siruya’s smile was just as open and guileless as Diana’s. In a corner of Helena’s mind, something tiny fluttered and then quietened down again. “I come to tell you that I know that there is more to you than what Hippolyta has forced out of you with the Lasso. I come to introduce myself in person so that you shall know me and know that at least one person on this island acknowledges that there is more to you. I am also certain that you feel alone, in which case it is also a good thing to know that there is someone who is reaching out to you.” She leaned forward. “When I talked with Diana, she advised me that you would like to be left in peace. I will honor that. On the other hand, in my work I have spoken with many different people, and among them I have come across people who, after an initial period of seclusion that was good for them, were caught in their remoteness unwillingly when it became loneliness. And since people around them honored their request to be left alone, there was no one to pull them back into a loving circle of family or friends.” Siruya leaned back into her chair again, putting the fingers of one hand on the table. “It might be presumptuous of me to apply these experiences to your situation. As a matter of fact, I have debated long if I should seek you out. If I’m wrong, you can simply ignore me.” She smiled again. “But if I’m right, it will be good for you to know this now.”

Helena had not moved a muscle during Siruya’s words. Part of her hoped that the woman would simply stop, get up, and leave, but in that small corner of her mind, there was part of her that took notice. And it was that part that nodded and said, “Thank you. I appreciate you coming to see me in person.” Then a smidgeon of her curiosity of old caused her to ask, “Siruya – is that an Assyrian name?”

Delight broke over Siruya’s face like sunlight through clouds. “It is indeed! Do you know about Assyria?” 

“A bit,” Helena confessed and found that she was genuinely returning Siruya’s smile. “Old civilizations are a hobby of mine. A writer myself, I find it interesting to see how humanity seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.” Her smile faltered. “I assume you have come across that, too.”

Siruya’s expression had become somber as well. “I have,” she said. “Sometimes it seems that for every piece of knowledge humanity gains, it loses two of understanding and empathy, or vice versa.” 

Helena nodded, frown now firmly and darkly in place. 

“Nevertheless,” Siruya continued, noticing Helena’s expression, “this island is proof that a better world can be achieved. And I am positive that out in the World of Man, more such proof exists.”

Helena huffed a breath of air that did not deserve to be called a laugh. “Some days I could almost be positive about that, too. I would concoct such stories about rosier futures, too.” A flicker of pain rose inside her and made its way across her face. “I felt that conviction especially strongly when my Christina was born. She was such a loving, light-hearted, sweet child. She was positive, every day anew, that anything she imagined could be achieved.” A bitter twist settled in the corner of Helena’s mouth. “And then my sweet, sunny, innocent daughter, my Christina, was murdered, along with her nanny. Simply because the two of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Siruya took a shuddering breath. “I grieve with you,” she said after a moment. 

“How can you?” Helena asked, but without rancor. She shrugged and looked aside. “Amazons are immortal, I’ve learned. Tell me, how can you know grief like mine?”

“Because I have lost my sister,” Siruya said simply. “I was not born an Amazon; I arrived here, just like you. As for the others, while they are impervious to age and sickness, they can be pierced by weapons and killed. They came here through slavery, war, and bloody revolution. There is not one among them that has not lost a loved one to premature death.” She smiled; a quick, not very happy flicker. “Except Diana,” she added softly.

Helena sat silent, too stunned to react. 

“We value peace and life, because we know their opposites intimately,” Siruya went on. “And we know grief, in its many forms.” When she smiled at Helena this time, the gesture was truer. “Already we know that we have things in common, you and I – writers, grievers, outsiders to Themyscira. You are not alone, Helena – or rather, it is your choice how alone you want to be, every day, every hour. If you want to be alone, you will be left alone. If you want company, reach out and it will be yours.” The chronicler stood to leave. “I will return tomorrow, at the same time of day. I will knock, and if you don’t want to see me, simply do not answer. Would this be acceptable to you?” She tilted her head, still smiling. “Know that you are absolutely free to say no, now and at any point in the future.”

Helena shook her head. “I… I don’t know,” she admitted. 

Siruya’s smile deepened. “Then let’s find out tomorrow.”

-_-_-

Siruya did return the next day, and every day after that. On her third visit, Siruya showed Helena to guest quarters that Helena had been assigned in the keep. On her sixth visit, Helena asked Siruya to show her around the keep and the city at its feet. On her eighth visit, Helena asked if they could visit Diana. In the days that followed, she found that she liked spending time with both women – they both were delightfully forthcoming with their curiosity, and delightfully curious about anything and everything under the sun. While Diana had an incredible eye for detail, Siruya always looked at the larger picture, which was both bonus and reason for her occupation as archivist and chronicler. 

Whether by courtesy or by unspoken consent, Helena did not know, but both Diana and Siruya refrained from asking Helena personal questions, something that Helena was immensely grateful for. Instead, they spoke about Themyscira and the Amazons, the history, customs and daily life of this new place Helena found herself in. There was plenty here to talk about.

On the twelfth day, the three of them explored Themyscira’s workshops, and Helena spent a whole afternoon animatedly talking with blacksmiths, silversmiths, carpenters, cobblers, spinners, weavers, glass blowers, ropemakers – women all, and all masters in their crafts. Helena breathed as freely as she had not in months, and on their way home her brain was a firework of ideas that had come about during the afternoon. 

“Antiope!” Diana called out in greeting as they passed a group of Amazons clad in leather armor. Training armor, Helena knew by now, having seen the princess wear it on several occasions. “How fortunate to see you! We talked with Io and Pallas just now, and there is something Helena and I would like to discuss with you. When do you have a moment?”

Helena could see that at the mention of her name, several of the Amazons around the general – who she had learned was Diana’s aunt, the queen’s sister – craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the newcomer. Her train of thought lost its eager momentum, and her face lost its relaxation. 

“It so happens that I’m free right now,” Antiope said, motioning for her companions to move ahead without her. “We just finished training – as you’d know if you had been there,” she admonished, a small smirk taking the bite out of her statement.

“I’ll make up for it,” Diana shrugged and smiled. “Antiope, Helena had an interesting idea for how to defend against bullets and guns.”

Antiope frowned. “Bullets and guns?”

Helena took a deep breath. “Weapons,” she explained. “Weapons that have been invented since the Amazons were removed from the World of Man. A gun is a weapon that uses chemical combustion to fire a metal bullet much faster than an arrow. Diana tells me you train for combat in order to be prepared for an invasion of men – but those men won’t be armed with swords and bows anymore; they’ll come with guns and artillery, cannons that fire explosive devices the size of a melon – devices you’ll have no defense against.” She looked at Antiope’s stony face and added, “There is a saying that necessity is the mother of all invention, but I truly believe that war is the father. Men will seek out any advantage in the race for power, and they’ve been quite… ingenious,” she spat the word, “when it comes to killing.” 

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Antiope murmured. She took a left turn at the next intersection. “Let us head for the barracks. I’ll wash the sweat off my back, and then you can show me this interesting idea of yours.”

-_-_-

“A colleague of mine,” Helena said when they were all seated around a table in the general’s office, “by the name of Nikola Tesla, invented a weapon for the Warehouse that was able to incapacitate a person, but not kill them. It uses electricity – the same phenomenon as lightning, or sparks from cat’s fur.” She paused for a moment, searching the other women’s faces, and found understanding. Nodding with surprised satisfaction, she continued, “Nikola’s weapon, which true to form he named after himself, would shoot a beam of electricity at a person – not enough to kill, but enough to temporarily disrupt the workings of the brain, so that the victim would lose consciousness for about a minute. After waking, the victim would not remember the last seconds before the attack, which was a boon for most retrieval missions.”

Antiope nodded curtly. “I understand. How does this help defend against bullets, though?”

Helena leaned forward slightly, gesturing to illustrate her words. “The main advantage that a bullet has over an arrow is its speed, or kinetic energy, rendering it more forceful than an arrow could ever be. Now Nikola and I were researching kinetic energy and how to modify it for a different project, and at some point we realized that if we created a certain type of electric field with a modified Tesla, it would swallow and disperse the kinetic energy of anything it encountered. Nikola called it a force shield. We realized it would work against any kind of kinetic energy, be it from a bludgeon or from a bullet fired at it.”

“It does not seem to be standard issue, though,” Antiope remarked dryly. “I’d think that armies would hunger for it. What problems did you run into?”

Helena snorted. “The problem is called Nikola Tesla. He’s… erratic. A genius, certainly, but also a hothead, and as easily distracted as a puppy.” She sighed, leaning back in her chair, ticking items off on her fingers. “He became obsessed with Roentgen rays, yet another form of energy. His lab burned down. He wanted to invent a new kind of energy transmission. He constantly had to apply for or contest patents.” Helena shook her head, still exasperated. “He simply was not the type of person to sit down and work on only one thing until it was perfected. Unless the mood took him, and then he’d work on something all hours of the day, all days of the week, not even sleeping until it was done.”

“But not the force shield,” Antiope grated. 

“No.” Helena sighed again. “A lot of our research burned when his lab caught fire, but I had copious notes of my own. I am confident that I can retrace our steps. I do need certain materials though, and Io and Pallas hadn’t heard of some of the things I was talking about, so I’ll have to see if I can recreate them from memory with the material and tools you have here.” She straightened her back. “In my mind, I can see a device about as large and heavy as a warrior’s canteen-” Antiope nodded in recognition immediately, almost impatiently, so Helena continued right away, “-connected to your bracers. If you have need of the force shield, cross your bracers. That will close the circuit and activate the shield; if you open your arms again, the force shield will dissipate.”

“Ah.” The general grinned, suddenly, fiercely. “Helena Wells, if you succeed in building a device like that, the Amazons will sing your praise for all eternity.”

“They would, too,” Siruya added dryly. “They so like to sing songs of martial prowess.” Undaunted by the scowl Antiope threw in her direction, the chronicler continued, “Regardless of if they can sing or not.”

Diana laughed. “Everyone knows that you have other strengths, Aunt Antiope.”

Antiope sniffed. “More of that tone and it’s a full day of extra training for you, Diana.” There was a glint in her eye that said she would forgive Diana anything, though. Helena was not looking for it, but she recognized it nevertheless. It woke her grief, which had been dormant all afternoon, and took her breath. She looked on wordlessly as the three women bantered, most assuredly an outsider still.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh _bollocks!_ ” The jar splintered into a thousand pieces as it hit the wall with what Helena thought was an extremely gratifying crash.

Creating electricity was not the problem. Windmill, magnet, copper wire – hey presto. Themyscira had plenty of wind, and the craftswomen Helena had spoken to had been able to provide magnetic iron and copper wire. _Storing_ the thus produced electricity, _that_ was the problem. Helena needed to build a battery, one that did not only produce electricity, but one that could store it. She had successfully recreated Volta’s pile, but that was of the first kind, not the latter, and now she was stymied. _Nikola would have a field day,_ she thought bitterly. _There’d be no end to his teasing if he saw me now._ Copper, zinc and seawater had not been enough. She needed something else, other materials for cathode and anode, another kind of electrolyte. But she did not know _what_ – and inorganic chemistry had never been her strong suit.

“Helena? Are you alright?” Niobe, the carpenter whose workshop was closest to Helena’s, called from outside. The dark-skinned woman had learned not to get too close to Helena’s outbursts. 

“Yes!” Helena shouted, and heard Niobe’s muttered response and receding footsteps, and then a slightly louder, if unintelligible exchange, and approaching footsteps, and a knock on Helena’s door. “Yes!” she shouted again, thumping the workbench’s top when she realized that the liquid that had been in the jar had left a stain on the wall’s plaster.

“Good morning, Helena,” Siruya said, opening the door a crack and peering cautiously through. “Are you still experiencing difficulties?”

Helena’s first impulse was to reply with a scathing retort. In the past weeks, however, Siruya had become her friend, and Helena knew that sarcasm would only hurt her, so she bit her tongue and breathed deeply before replying. “Yes,” she grated. She made a vague gesture that Siruya was free to interpret as an invitation to come in, and turned back to her workbench.

“Which part of the process?” Siruya asked, her footfalls indicating that she had come in and was walking towards Helena. 

Turning around, Helena quickly outlined the problem. Siruya narrowed her eyes. “Storing electricity,” the chronicler mused. “I suppose it does not want to live in a jar, then?” She threw a meaningful eye towards the shards on the floor.

Again, Helena bit back a quip. Siruya did not deserve it. “I’ve been trying to build a battery,” she said. “A device to store electricity. All it does is produce electricity, though, not store it.” Her fist hit the tabletop again. “I’ve never wished to be back in London more than I do now, Siruya. I know three chemists where I could simply walk in and _buy_ -” she interrupted herself. “Well. Where I could _send in my brother_ to buy a battery,” she amended acerbically. Grating her teeth, she stared blankly at the stained wall.

“I miss my home to this day,” Siruya said quietly.

Helena closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “That,” she said through clenched jaws, “is not helpful.”

“Isn’t it?” Siruya cocked her head. “Helena, you have every right to be frustrated about your experiments’ failures. I know Antiope is impatient, and would be on your doorstep every evening, demanding progress reports, if Menalippe hadn’t told her not to.” 

“Menalippe?” 

“Antiope’s lieutenant. She has more of a knack for… difficult cases.”

Helena’s temper flared up. “Oh, I’m a difficult case, am I? Is that why I haven’t been offered the decision to stay or leave yet?”

Siruya sighed, which did not serve to calm Helena down. The chronicler pulled one of the tall stools that stood in front of the workbench over to where Helena stood, and sat down on it. “If I were to offer it to you right now, Helena, how would you decide? I’m a member of the senate; it is within my powers, you know.”

That made Helena sit up and take notice. “I…” she began, and fell silent again. 

Siruya nodded, grasping Helena’s hand. “And I understand that,” she said forcefully, squeezing Helena’s stained fingers. “It is a difficult knot to unravel, when you don’t know which place to call home. When the place you came from holds so many happy memories, but is also the place where your loved one died.” Her thumb traced patterns on the back of Helena’s hand. “When here is a place where you’re valued for who you are, not how much dowry you bring, how powerful your father was, or how pretty your face happens to be.”

Helena, at a loss for words, simply nodded. Siruya had never revealed more about her past, either, in all their many conversations. Helena had simply not felt ready to talk about it – but Siruya had lived here for centuries, that much Helena knew by now. _If she hasn’t felt ready after all this time, what does that mean for me?_

“My family was very wealthy,” Siruya said with a far-away look in her eyes. “Enough so that my father joked that he could afford having seven daughters. He did want a son, though, and so he impregnated my mother time and again, even when she had difficulties carrying a child to term. After two stillbirths and a baby boy who did not live long enough to be named, our neighbors began to say that she was cursed.” She smiled a sad smile. “I don’t doubt that my father cared for my mother. He did not divorce her, and he stood up for her against the neighbors, but he insisted that he wanted a son. Daughters cannot inherit, you see – and none of my sister’s husbands were fit to inherit my father’s estate, in his eyes.”

Siruya looked up to meet Helena’s eyes, and rolled her eyes skywards in resignation. 

“I was four when my mother conceived for the last time,” she continued. “Not that we knew that when she told us ‘the good news.’” Siruya chewed on the words as though they left a very bitter taste in her mouth. “Her pregnancy was difficult. She lost weight, and seemed to be only belly at the end. Again, the neighbors spread rumors, but this time they said it was the baby who was cursed, and my father’s seed, too.” She quirked her mouth unhappily. “When it was time for the baby to be born, it seemed that the rumors were true – my mother was in labor for thirty hours, and she died shortly after pushing the baby out. She did not even see her child,” Siruya added, her gaze again a thousand miles away. “None of us did, except the midwife, but she was old, so no one thought much of it when she also died soon after.”

Siruya gave Helena a shaky smile. “Since my mother was dead and my sisters already married and living with their husband’s families, my father told me it was my duty to look after my brother. He bought a nanny goat to give milk for him. When I changed my brother’s soiled rag for the first time, I wondered why he looked just like me, but I was young and did not know that male babies and female babies looked different from each other. I believed my father when he said that my brother's man parts would grow in puberty, just like my sisters’ breasts had grown in puberty.” She laughed dryly. “My father announced the birth of his son, Assur-Ubalid, with a large feast. He invited the whole village, our whole family. He practically negotiated Assur-Ubalid’s marriage on that day, to the village smith’s daughter.” Siruya’s face softened, tinged with fond recollections. “Assur-Ubalid was a sweet child. I loved him, and he loved me.” She huffed a laugh. “And I say ‘he,’ and ‘him,’ because that was who he was, to me, and to my father, and to the rest of the world.”

Helena squeezed Siruya’s hand again, dreading what would come. 

“My father was so proud of his son.” A spasm twitched across Siruya’s face. “He raised Assur-Ubalid as his successor, taught him all he knew about breeding the best horses this side of the Tigris. Each night, Assur-Ubalid would recount to me what he’d learned, although this was not knowledge suitable for a woman.” Siruya gave a small, eye-rolling smile. “I was his only friend, though, since my father kept him isolated from anyone else. And so whenever my brother had a question, or wanted to tell someone something, he had only me to turn to.

“We became so close,” Siruya went on, speaking more to herself than to Helena now. “He liked pretty things, bright colors. He would pick flowers, pluck off their petals, and create patterns with them, and cry when the wind blew them apart or when the sun withered them. He would draw on the ground, with mud of different colors, or with a sharpened stick. He could never show any of this to our father, of course. Not after our father, when he found my brother doing this for the first time, had beaten him to within an inch of his life for this ‘worthless pursuit.’ But I would praise my brother for his art, for it was beautiful.” A tear spilled and ran down Siruya’s cheek unheeded. “Should I not have done that?” Her eyes focused on Helena again. “Should I not have encouraged his love of beautiful things?” Siruya swallowed. “There were moments – moments stolen when my father was away on business too important to even bring his heir along. Moments when, in hindsight, it was obvious that Assur-Ubalid was not a boy, no matter his hairstyle or his clothes. She would tell me how she envied my garments and their bright colors. She would ask to play with my doll, and she would pretend to be its mother, and she would tell me that she wondered if she would ever have a child.” Siruya was crying now, a steady stream of tears. 

Again, Helena’s fingers tightened around Siruya’s. Oh, she had dreamed of disguising herself as a boy, but this? Her knees were trembling, and she blindly grasped for the other stool and sat down next to Siruya.

Siruya took a deep breath. “Looking back now, I have no idea how my father thought that Assur-Ubalid’s secret could be kept after marriage,” she said explosively. “It would be obvious on the nuptial bed, wouldn’t it? As Assur-Ubalid grew older, we both of us eagerly awaited the day when his ‘man parts’ would start to grow. My breasts had started growing when I was twelve, but I had been a late bloomer compared to my sisters. So from the day that my brother turned eight, he kept expecting things to happen. Each morning he would be disappointed.” Siruya shook her head. “We never had any other male children around to compare. Our servants had families, but they lived in their own quarters and even the adults weren’t expected to come near us except to serve food and to clean. There was no way for us to know that our father had deceived us. I can’t fathom how-” she broke off and shook her head again. “I can only assume that he had convinced himself that Assur-Ubalid truly was a boy, and that what he’d seen at his son’s birth had been a bad dream.” She shrugged. “Assur-Ubalid was so excited, but at some point, that turned to anxiousness,” she continued quietly. “He started to have nightmares of never changing, and of being laughed at or scorned or sent away. In his waking moments, he worried himself sick. When he turned eleven, his breasts started to grow, and he almost lost his mind. Neither of us had expected _that_ to happen. We fashioned a binder for him, and he began to keep himself to himself even opposite our father. But it hurt him – her. It took us a while to realize that our father had lied to us, that Assur-Ubalid was as much girl as I was, and on the cusp of becoming a woman. We both started having nightmares about what would happen if she started bleeding. So we ran away one night.” Her eyes, such a curious and beautiful golden color, met Helena’s. “I was fifteen, and she was almost twelve, and it was three days before her wedding day.”

“You ran away?” Helena exclaimed in disbelief. “That must have been…”

“Difficult,” Siruya nodded with a small smile. “We stole four of our father’s best horses,” she went on, “and set out for the coast. We had heard rumors that there was a place – an island out in the sea where only women lived. Assur-Ubalid was stiff with fear that she would not be allowed to live there, because she still was not quite sure what she was. I tried to reassure her, saying that if she said she was a woman, they should accept her or they’d lose both her and me.” She laughed a small, sad excuse for a laugh. “On good days, we would muse about which name she wanted to be called, now that she could live as a woman. I suggested Astarte, ‘star,’ because just like the night, she had both brilliance and beauty, and darkness and fear.” Siruya wiped away her tears with her free hand, sniffed, and went on, “From what we had learned from merchants and traders, it would take us about two weeks to reach the sea. We had no idea how to proceed from there, but we were determined. We made the best speed we could, and Astarte employed all the knowledge that our father had taught her. We changed our horses frequently, we walked them, we rested them, no matter how impatient we were. Whenever we couldn’t avoid people, Astarte would claim to be my husband,” she added with a small shake of her head. “She had such an assured way about her – the air of a powerful horse-breeder’s son. We were rarely questioned.”

Helena saw Siruya’s expression soften and sadden, and knew that the tale would not have a happy ending. She suddenly remembered Siruya saying, when she had first visited Helena, that she had lost a sister. Helena’s stomach plummeted. “We almost made it,” Siruya said, looking at their intertwined hands. “We had already reached the coast, had already hired a boat. The fisherman said he knew where we were headed, said he knew the way to get there. We traded him the horses – a princely price, and he knew it. Today I know he never intended for us to go anywhere but the bottom of the sea.” Siruya’s face twitched again and she gripped Helena’s fingers hard. “He attacked us during the night, when we both had fallen asleep. He…” she swallowed and continued in a low, expressionless voice. “He cut my sister’s throat, and was about to cut mine when I woke. Astarte’s leg had kicked out and caught mine – she saved me even in death.” Siruya closed her eyes, and more tears rolled down her cheeks. “To this day I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I managed to get my legs between him and me, and I kicked him overboard.” Her mouth twitched again. “Like many fishermen, he didn’t know how to swim. He tried to get back on board, but I had the knife now, and slashed at his hands until he stopped.” Siruya gave a little sigh. “He thrashed around a little, and then he sank like a stone. And there I was, in a boat I didn’t know how to sail, with my dead sister lying next to me.” She laughed once, a sound containing only bitterness, no humor. “If only he had pushed her overboard instead of taking to his knife, she might still live, because Thetis will bring drowning human children to Themyscira for the Amazons to nurse back to health and then send them back to their families. But he didn’t, so she died.”

Siruya was clinging to Helena’s hand as if it was a lifeline. Helena put her other hand on top of their entwined fingers, trying to fathom the other woman’s grief. She could see the similarities to her own – the impotence to save the one they had loved, the violence of their loved ones’ deaths, the cruelty of the people responsible. The haunting thought that if only things had been a little different, Astarte or Christina might still be alive.

“We washed ashore, quite similarly to you,” Siruya ended her tale. “Astarte was buried on Themyscira, in the brightest colored cloths that the Amazons could procure.” She chuckled through a sob. “Not very bright, to tell the truth – this island is rich in many things, but pigments are not among them. But they and I did the best we could. And flowers – we covered her in flowers before-” Siruya broke off and took a deep breath. “I was heartbroken. In the first weeks, I tried to drown myself twice, and the Amazons took to guarding me.” She smiled wanly. “Epione said that healing is not just a matter of the body, but a matter of the soul as well. And my soul was hurting, just as you are hurting now.”

“How…” Helena had to clear her throat before the words would come out properly. “How did you heal?” 

Another smile chased the first one, even dimmer than the other had been. “I haven’t,” Siruya said simply. “Not fully. The hole that my sister’s death tore is never going to close or heal over. There will never be a moment when I don’t miss her. There will never be a time when I will not think that I should have done better to save her.” 

Helena’s shoulders sagged. Siruya had lived with her grief for centuries. Centuries! In London, Helena’s friends had helplessly tried to convince her that time would heal her wounds, and even then she had not believed them. Helena only realized that she had been slumping forwards when Siruya rested her forehead against hers, and cupped her neck. 

“We will always feel guilt on a visceral level,” Siruya said softly. “Guilt that we weren’t where we should have been, guilt that we weren’t able to do what needed to be done, guilt that we survived when they didn’t. It’s how you respond to that guilt that matters, Helena.” 

Helena huffed in disbelief, but Siruya continued. “We can only tell ourselves that we did everything we could. That it wasn’t in our power to save our loved ones. We can only try to live our lives to the fullest, for the ones we lost. To enjoy life the way they would have wanted us to, and to make memories that we can tell them when we encounter them in the Great Below.”

Helena breathed in sharply, torn between Siruya’s attempt at consolation and her own feeling of inadequacy. Finally, she pulled herself back. “No!” Siruya’s hand slid from its perch on her neck and came to rest on Helena’s leg. “I _haven’t_ done everything I can, Siruya, not yet. I…” Helena shook her head wildly, disgusted at the tears that were shaken loose by the motion. “There _has_ to be a way to bring Christina back.”

“Helena, no one comes back from the-”

“No!” Helena shouted, her voice breaking through several octaves. “There are so many stories – Orpheus. Odin. Your Inanna! Jesus resurrected Jairus’ daughter – there wouldn’t be this many stories if they didn’t have a grain of truth at their core, would there? I dealt with artifacts that can change the weather at the wielder’s whim, that can make a person fly, that can do the most incredible things – there has to be one that can bring back a dead person, there _has_ to be!”

“Helena-”

“There has to be!” Helena almost screeched. “My… my baby can’t be dead. She’s… she’s waiting for me to find… whatever it is that I need.” She looked around herself wildly. “What am I even doing here?!” She stood up and ran towards the hearth, dousing its flames with the large bucket of sand that stood next to it for that very purpose. 

“Helena!” Siruya rushed over to Helena, catching her from behind and pinning her arms to her sides in a tight embrace. “Please, don’t.”

Helena fought the chronicler, but Siruya was an Amazon, and taller than her to boot. Helena’s arms struggled to break free, her hands convulsed, wanting to smash things, to fling more jugs against the wall, to tear down walls and level the whole place, to soothe the roiling darkness in her soul with any destruction she could wreak. And yet Siruya held her, never causing her undue pain, but never letting her go, either. Helena writhed and kicked, and found herself lifted off her feet without so much as a grunt of exertion from the woman holding her. Bereft of every other way to express her agony, Helena threw back her head and screamed. Her voice broke again, and she drew another breath and screamed louder, longer, flinging her pain, her rage, her frustration into the ether, drew yet another breath and screamed again, screamed until her lungs burned and her legs collapsed, screamed until only breathless sobs came out, screamed and sobbed until she hung in Siruya’s arms like a rag doll and knew no more.


	7. Chapter 7

Helena woke alone. A brief pang pierced her heart at the realization. What would she not give to be held and soothed and told everything was alright? Then reality asserted itself as assuredly as the sunlight on her blankets, and she took a deep breath and got ready to face the day.

There were two sheets of paper on her table. Helena approached them cautiously. One almost fully covered the other, and the handwriting on it she was by now able to recognize as Siruya’s. Centuries of recording other people’s stories and tales and copying them out to preserve them had given the chronicler a precise, easily legible hand. Helena looked at the sheets of paper as if they were a snake waiting to strike, and decided after a moment’s deliberation that she would at least freshen up and get dressed before reading whatever Siruya had left behind.

Washed and dressed, Helena nibbled on a day-old pastry, staring out of the window and musing about her breakfast. Baked goods were a staple in the Amazons’ diet, which had given Helena pause before – where were all the wheat fields, she had wondered. Windmills, she had seen. She even had built a small one of her own, to create electricity. Bakeries, she had seen. But on all their forays out of the city, Helena had not seen anywhere near the number of wheat fields that would be necessary to feed the city’s population bread every day.

She stopped her ponderings, though, when she realized what she was doing. _Procrastination will lead you nowhere, Georgie._ Helena rolled her eyes at herself and took the letter up to read it. 

> My dear Helena –  
> All I know about you by now tells me you would rather find yourself alone upon waking up – I hope I have not misjudged you on this. If I have, I hope you will forgive me for not staying with you.  
> I thank you for trusting me with your grief. I hope expressing it like you did is a step on your way of healing. I will accompany you if you let me, every single step.  
> I stayed for a bit while you slept, to see if you would sleep peacefully. You did while I was there, which was another reason for me to think that it was safe to leave you. I hope that your sleep continued in that way, and that you are refreshed this morning.  
> During my first months of grieving, I found it most distressing that at times I had difficulties remembering how my sister looked. So I started to draw her, and found that I shared my sister’s artistic talents to some degree. I have left you an image of her in case you want to know what she looked like.  
> If you ever want to share how Christina looked, what her life was like, please know that I am there to listen, to honor and celebrate your daughter. If you wish, we can chronicle her life so that she will not be forgotten. If you only wish to talk, that is good as well. If you do not wish to talk, I am there to spend time with you. If you need some time alone, again – that is also good. In that case, I will seek you out in a few days, to make sure you do not get caught in solitude.  
> Allow me to express my gratitude again and my sincerest compassion. May you start this day lighter than you finished the last.  
> Siruya, daughter of Walita, grand-daughter of Sawrina, sister to Astarte

The piece of paper trembled in Helena’s hand as she looked at the other one that had been hidden underneath. It was an ink sketch of a young girl’s face, its features deep in concentration. The girl shared Siruya’s high cheekbones, but they were set in a wider face, and the eyes above them were more deeply set than Siruya’s were. The slight frown between the eyebrows was familiar, though, and both sisters had the same determined set to their mouths, and the same deep Cupid’s bow. Astarte’s hair seemed to have been darker than Siruya’s, at least to judge from a black-and-white sketch. It was bound into a large bun on the top of her head, from which numerous ribbons streamed. Helena imagined them to be all the colors of the rainbow, and only noticed that her eyes were brimming when refracted sunlight painted rainbows across her vision.

 _Christina would have loved to try this hairstyle._  
  
The treacherous thought made the tears spill over. 

-_-_-

“Helena! Oh it is good to see you.” Siruya pulled Helena through her door and into an embrace. Helena stiffened at the contact, and then berated herself as Siruya let go immediately. “I apologize,” the chronicler said, eyes downcast, color in her cheeks. 

“Don’t,” Helena said. “It…” she took a deep breath. “I…”

Siruya’s golden eyes came up to meet Helena’s brown ones, frowned compassionately at what they saw in them, and then Siruya pulled Helena close again and held her for a long moment. “Diana has told me that expressing emotions openly is seen as weakness in your society,” Siruya murmured into Helena’s hair. “I suppose the same goes for physical contact?”

Helena shuddered and rested her head on the other woman’s shoulder. Mutely, she nodded. “At least in public,” she added indistinctly. “For many, it has become a thing to be avoided altogether.”

She could feel Siruya’s sigh in the slight drooping of the woman’s shoulders. “A pity,” Siruya said, and Helena agreed wholeheartedly. “The embrace of a friend, the kiss of a mother, the touch of a lover – so valuable all.” Her arms tightened around Helena, then came up to grasp Helena’s shoulders. Pushing them gently apart, Siruya looked at Helena searchingly. “So missing in solitude.”

“Indeed,” Helena croaked. 

With a slight smile, Siruya led Helena over to her living area, where a wealth of multi-colored cushions and poufs surrounded a low bronze table. “Sit,” the chronicler said, “I will bring water.”

“Thank you.” Helena sank onto one of the seats. She carefully deposited the ink sketch on the table. “I brought your sketch with me,” she said when Siruya returned, a tray with a jug and two glasses in her hands. Helena moved the sketch so that Siruya could set the tray down. “I wasn’t sure if I was meant to keep it or simply look at it.”

Siruya smiled as she poured the water. “You are welcome to keep it if you will,” she replied. “I have a chest full of them.” She pointed towards where Helena knew her bedroom was and chuckled. “I could adorn every square inch of wall with them and still have more to spare.” 

“The other drawings in here are yours, then?” Helena looked around the familiar room and its wall adornments with new appreciation. 

“Most of them,” Siruya said. “Some have been given to me by others, though.” She pointed at a breathtakingly lifelike sketch of a horse in full gallop. “This is from Philippus, for example.” Her smile widened into a grin and she shook her head. “Always the horses with that one,” she said. 

“It’s beautiful, though,” Helena protested. 

“You haven’t seen her quarters,” Siruya said dryly. She raised a glass. “To friendship,” she said.

“A toast with water?” Helena teased, then followed suit. “To friendship,” she echoed, feeling that the occasion certainly warranted the celebration. After taking a long draught, she swallowed carefully and said, with even greater care, “Christina would have loved that painting. She adored horses.” 

Siruya’s smile returned. “They are magnificent creatures, aren’t they?”

Helena nodded, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards involuntarily. “My parents were scandalized, of course.” She shook her head ruefully. “Admiring horses was no pursuit for a lady, in their opinion.”

There was a knock on Siruya’s door. Siruya exchanged a glance with Helena, and when Helena nodded, called, “Enter!”, and began to rise. Upon recognizing their visitor, though, the chronicler sank back again and announced, “We’re through here, Diana.”

“Good morning, Siruya – good morning, Helena!” Diana held a small basket aloft. “Oeone sent these up to me. Strawberries and honeyed yogurt! I thought we could share them. I’m sure they will feed three,” she added, winking at Helena. 

Helena narrowed her eyes. “Yogurt?” she asked. “What about cream?”

“What about it?” Diana asked back, frowning in confusion. 

Helena’s mouth dropped open. “Have you never had strawberries and whipped cream?” she asked incredulously. 

Both Amazons shook their heads. “Why would you whip cream?” Diana asked.

Helena closed her eyes, salivating at the memory. “It’s only called ‘whipping,’” she smiled. “You take a whisk, and beat the cream very quickly. Not,” she continued quickly when both women opened their mouths at the same time, “in the way you make butter. The process and implements are slightly different. The goal is to get air into the cream. It will stiffen and grow in volume. You add sugar for sweetness, maybe a little vanilla…” she had to swallow, and the other two laughed. 

“We can try recreating that,” Siruya said, and Diana nodded with wide, gleaming eyes. Ever since Helena had first talked about sugar and confectionery, Diana’s ears would perk up at the mention of anything containing the sweet substance. “Not now, though,” the chronicler added. When she leaned forward to make space for Diana’s basket on the table, Diana saw the painting. 

“That’s a sketch of your sister, isn’t it?” she asked gently. 

Siruya nodded, but left it unexplained. 

“Have Helena and you talked about Astarte, then?” 

When it became clear that Siruya would keep her silence, Helena nodded and cleared her throat. “Yes, we have. And…” she took a deep breath and forged on, “and we were currently talking about Christina and her love of horses.”

Diana’s face burst into a radiant smile. “She loved horses? Oh, I used to love riding as a child, when I thought I’d never be as fast.” She laughed. “I’ve learned better since then, and I do prefer fighting on foot, but I still remember the love I felt for Chiore.”

Siruya nodded and smiled. “As do we all,” she added. “You and that horse were inseparable for a long time.”

“I couldn’t have explored Themyscira the way I did without her,” Diana said, head bowed modestly, a mischievous smile playing around her lips. 

“Didn’t Philippus paint a picture of you and Chiore?” Siruya asked her. 

“Oh!” Diana’s smile grew. “Yes, she did! I’ll go and get it!” Halfway to the door, she called over her shoulder, “Don’t eat all the strawberries!”

Siruya laughed and shook her head. “When it comes to strength and prowess with a weapon, Diana is invincible,” she said, “but she’s going to have to learn the value of patience and planning. Every time she has a thought, she puts it into action immediately.”

Helena nodded, taking another labored breath. “Christina was the same. Sometimes it’s uncanny how much Diana reminds me of her.”

Siruya touched Helena’s hand briefly. “As a matter of fact, that is why I brought up Philippus’ sketch,” she said. “You see…” the chronicler paused for a moment. “When I taught myself how to paint, many Amazons came to see me and Iphtime, who’d done the same, asking if we could draw their lost loved ones. Iphtime and I became quite adept at creating pictures from descriptions. If you want,” Siruya looked at Helena with compassion in her eyes, “we can try and create a picture of Christina.” When Helena did not answer, Siruya went on, “I’ve seen the way you look at Diana sometimes. She is not just similar to Christina in her impulsiveness, isn’t she?” Helena shook her head mutely. Siruya’s fingers returned and clasped her hand more securely. “Helena, are you of a mind to proceed with this? If not, say so and we’ll simply eat strawberries and enjoy the sunshine.”

“I…” Helena hesitated. “I do want to… speak about my daughter. I do want to remember her. Like you, I’ve experienced moments when I couldn’t clearly remember her face-” she broke off, swallowing hard. “I have photographs of her at home,” she said, and added, “a technology that uses a light-sensitive substance to create an accurate copy of any sight.” Seeing Siruya’s questioning frown, Helena elaborated, “Have you heard of the pinhole effect? Light falls through a very small hole into a dark room and recreates, against the opposite wall, an upside-down image of what is outside that room?”

Siruya’s expression cleared. “Oh! Yes.”

Helena nodded. “Now imagine you have a plate covered in a substance that changes when the light falls on it, and eternalizes the picture automatically.”

Siruya raised her eyebrows. “Astounding. Drawing with light, indeed,” she said, and then smiled. “And obviously commonplace for you, since you speak of having multiple such pictures.”

Helena nodded. “I do have one very special one in color,” she replied, “but black-and-white photography is indeed commonplace.” She waved a hand apologetically. “I think we’d sit here for the rest of today if I went into the intricacies of color photography,” she continued, “so with your permission, I’ll return to the topic of Christina’s photos.”

Siruya squeezed Helena’s hand and nodded. “Please do.”

“When I was sent to Athens to retrieve the Antikynthera Mechanism, I took a picture of her with me,” Helena said with a pained grimace. “However, along with most of my other belongings, it was stolen during my attempt to find the remnants of Warehouse 1.” Her nose flared as she inhaled. “My feelings for the men who took it from me don’t quite reach the murderous rage I feel for the scum that killed my daughter,” she said fiercely, “but they should count themselves lucky, nevertheless, that I did not find them.” 

Siruya nodded again, matching Helena’s expression. “I never regretted causing that fisherman’s death,” she said darkly.

Before Helena could say anything else, there was another knock on the door and Diana was back, brandishing a framed piece of paper. “Here it is,” the young warrior announced. She took a good look at both seated women’s faces and tilted her head. “You don’t look as though you’ve eaten _any_ strawberries!” she exclaimed, trying to lift the tension in the room. She sat down, putting the painting face-down on a cushion next to her, and pulled the basket towards herself. “Come, let’s have them right now.”

Talk moved onto easier things as they dived into the sweet fruit and honeyed yogurt, such as favorite fruits – Diana and Helena both naming strawberries, while Siruya claimed pomegranates – and reminiscences about eating them.

After they had finished, Siruya fetched a water bowl and some towels for cleaning their hands. Diana replaced the bowls and spoons in her basket and put it aside to take to the communal kitchen later. Helena looked at the piece of paper resting on its cushion as though it was about to jump and bite her. 

“Are you ready?” Siruya asked after wiping off the table. When Helena nodded, the chronicler stood up and fetched a wax tablet and stylus. “Let us begin, then.”

Diana picked up the painting and handed it wordlessly to Helena, who took it gingerly. Throat parched despite the recent delicacy, she swallowed before turning it over. 

Helena thought she had been prepared. She had spent weeks in Diana’s company now, had had dozens of days to get used to the fact that so many of Diana’s expressions woke memories of her daughter. 

What she had not been prepared for was that as a child, Diana had been the spitting image of her Christina. The painting was from the perspective of an onlooker standing right in front of the horse, catching both the animal’s attentive eyes and ears, and the exhilarated and affectionate look on the face of the rider as she patted the horse’s neck. It could have been Wimbledon just as easily as Themyscira. It could have been Christina just as easily as Diana.

With trembling hands, Helena put the painting on the table for safety and sat back, balling her hands into fists. Her eyes fluttered close over a sudden onslaught of tears. She heard a rustle, and then felt Siruya’s warmth on her left side a moment before the Amazon’s hand found Helena’s. Patient fingers gently coaxed until Helena opened her fist and clenched her fingers around Siruya’s instead. 

“I’m sorry,” she heard Diana say, heard the confusion and compassion in the young Amazon’s voice. Young, but definitely an adult, and not a child of eight. 

The realization helped reassure Helena to the point where she felt able to open her eyes and, inevitably, look at Diana’s face – a face that told her in every single feature how her daughter might have looked, had she lived to her twentieth birthday. Helena gave a dry sob. Her right hand wanted nothing more than to reach out and trace every line of that face, but this was not her child, and while she considered Diana a friend by now, that did not extend to the kind of caress this would be. 

She sobbed once more, and tears started to flow in earnest when Diana grasped her free hand and pulled it close. Helena remembered herself enough to open her fist so that her palm could find Diana’s cheek and cup it. She shuddered at the contact, and closed her eyes against the bottomless empathy she saw in Diana’s gaze.

She felt Siruya lean forward and turn to face Helena. The chronicler offered her shoulder for Helena to lean against, and Helena’s body gladly accepted. Siruya’s left arm came up to hold her, and then Diana moved forwards too, sliding off her cushion and onto her knees, embracing both Siruya and Helena at the same time.

Helena felt as though she had never cried like this since Christina had died, and in a way, she had not. Certainly never in the arms of anyone, much less two people at once. Certainly never this deliberate. She had broken down crying twice in someone else’s presence – once Wolcott, once Caturanga’s wife Sita – apart from the multiple times when she had been alone, but those occasions all had one thing in common: they had been wrenched from her iron control over her emotions, brought forth by a grief that would not be contained by willpower any longer.

In this moment, though, Helena gave herself license. She offered up her pain for her companions to see, knowing that one of them had gone through a similar kind of pain, knowing that the other might not fully understand, but would stand with her nevertheless, as evidenced by the unwavering strength of Diana’s arms around her shoulders.

Every now and then, sounds tore from her throat; deep, wrenching groans and shuddering sobs. A hand had started running over her hair at some point – Siruya’s, she vaguely reasoned, since Diana’s arms had not moved. Every now and then, she noticed gentle words, in English, in the Amazonian variant of Greek, and in what she surmised was Assyrian – she did not need to understand them to know their purpose, to be reassured of the speaker’s commiseration. Every now and then, she noticed lips on her forehead or hairline, serving the same purpose. 

The sun was shining through the windows at quite a different angle when Helena regained enough presence of mind to notice her surroundings. She stayed where she was, though, finding solace in the way that Diana and Siruya were holding her up. Another indeterminable amount of time later, when Helena’s breathing had returned to normal, she straightened slightly. 

Her eyes fell on Siruya’s, first. The chronicler smiled at her, then inclined her head until her forehead rested against Helena’s, cupping her neck. They stayed like that for a long moment, breaths mingling, then Siruya pressed another kiss on Helena’s cheek and pulled away. “I’ll get water and a cloth,” she announced as she rose.

Diana had sat back on her haunches, one hand still resting on Helena’s arm. She regarded the Englishwoman with her head tilted to one side. Helena could not help but chuckle. What was Diana curious about now? 

“Out with it,” she said, surprised that her voice still worked. 

Diana blushed and dropped her gaze. “It… I don’t want to sound callous or impolite.”

Helena raised her eyebrows and exchanged a look with the returning Siruya. “Noted,” she said, accepting the damp cloth from Siruya and starting to wash her face. 

“You… I… we Amazons have stories, you know,” Diana began. “About the World of Man.”

Returning the cloth to the bowl to rinse it, Helena nodded. “Of course,” she said.

The corners of Diana’s mouth set into an expression of perplexity. “Some of those stories made it seem that men don’t have the same depth or range of emotions that we Amazons do.”

“Question,” Helena said, washcloth hovering in front of a slight frown of her own. “When you say ‘men,’ you mean male people, or ‘man’ as opposed to ‘Amazons?’” Shrugging, she added, “Or gods?” 

“The latter,” Diana said quickly, “excuse my imprecise use of the word.” 

Helena waved a hand vaguely, rubbing the wet cloth against her temple with the other. “And now you wonder why?” she asked. 

“Yes!” Diana exclaimed. “It is obvious that you feel your loss just as deeply as any of us. Why would a story claim otherwise?”

“Stories always serve a purpose,” Siruya interjected, her voice gentle, but her eyes stony. “What kind of purpose, do you think, would be served by this?”

Diana shook her head. “Discord,” she said finally. “It would make Amazons feel superior, and men seem lesser.” Her frown gained a steely quality. “But again, why? What purpose does _that_ serve?”

Helena huffed. “It’s always easier to make a decision for someone else if you perceive them to be less than yourself.” She lowered her head, remembering lessons she had learned from Caturanga. “We British have a long, sad history of that.”

Diana’s frown had deepened to a scowl. “When the Amazons were created,” she announced, “the purpose we were given was to guide mankind towards a better future. But that implies that we know things that mankind doesn’t! Does that not make us better, make us more than them?”

“Think hard about that one, Diana,” Helena said, her voice turning tired. “Not just today, but every day. Does knowing more than someone else make you better than them?” 

“A mother guides her children,” Diana replied, but she, too, sounded different now, more musing and less demanding. “A cat teaches her kittens how to hunt. A person with knowledge has an advantage over someone who doesn’t have that knowledge.” She tilted her head. “Only in situations where that knowledge applies, though,” she added. 

Siruya nodded. “Take Helena – we explained a great many things to her in the beginning, but if we were to accompany her to the World of Man, I’m sure she’d have to explain just as much to us, if not more.”

Helena snorted a laugh at the idea of walking down Pall Mall with two Amazons. Then she took a deep breath. “Siruya is right in that this is a topic to be debated and mulled over for a long time,” she said. “I agree with that, and would ask that it not be right now.”

Diana nodded immediately. “Of course,” she said. From one moment to the next, her face cleared and broke into a smile. “What would you rather do, Helena?”

Helena took a deep breath and nodded towards the wax tablet that had lain forgotten on the table. “I would like to try and recreate Christina’s picture,” she said softly.


	8. Chapter 8

“Helena!” To describe the noise Diana woke from Helena’s door as ‘knocking’ would be to ignore the opportunity to use words like ‘pounding’ and possibly ‘crashing,’ Helena thought as she woke up. “Helena, are you awake?”

“I am now,” Helena shouted out. She groaned when she heard the young woman slam door open. No tea, no coffee. Some mornings were better than others, but this morning was one when she mourned those absences emphatically. She rolled out of bed as Diana appeared in the doorway to her bedroom. 

“Oh!” the young Amazon exclaimed. Unlike most days when they just conversed or visited places or people, Diana had donned what Helena thought of as ‘her princess outfit’ this morning. While not quite full armor, it made clear that the woman wearing it was an Amazon, and of the ruling family – a leather bodice with accents of metal over a fighting skirt, held by a belt that picked up the combination of leather and metal again and bore a sheathed dagger on the right hip, leaving the left free for a sword that, obviously, Diana had foregone today. She had added a light hooded cape, though, and drops sitting on it around Diana’s shoulders testified to the fact that it was a rainy morning on Themyscira. 

Helena pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do take a seat,” she grumbled, “while I dress, will you?” As Diana nodded and retired to the sitting room, Helena filled the wash basin with water and splashed it into her face, banking on the coolness to jerk her fully awake. 

A few minutes later, they were out of the door. In Helena’s opinion, Diana was almost too eager to take her wherever they were going, but at least the young woman had been thoughtful enough to bring breakfast rolls to eat while they walked. Both Siruya and Diana had taken it upon themselves to keep plying Helena with food. Helena knew it was a necessary endeavor – she seldom paid attention to her body’s needs at the best of times, and after Christina’s death, she had lost all interest completely. If Caturanga, or more truthfully his wife Sita, had not pressed food on her whenever they had been able, Helena knew she would not have made it through her first month of grieving. 

At first, Helena thought they were visiting Siruya – Diana was taking her to the part of the main keep that held the chronicler’s office. But then they went down a different hallway, and came to a different door. Again, Diana barely waited for her knock to be acknowledged before she entered.

“Good morning, Penelope,” she greeted the woman behind the desk. “This is Helena Wells. Helena, this is Penelope, our historian.”

The woman nodded regally. “Welcome,” she said, rising. “Your aunt has notified me of your visit,” she told Diana. Motioning for the two women to follow her, she walked towards the second door in the room. “I understand the purpose of it, and hope it will be successful.”

Taking and igniting a torch from a bundle of them that waited just behind the door, Penelope led them through a long hallway around several corners. She opened another door and touched the torch to a sconce on the wall; fire sprang up in it and traveled along a number of oil-filled channels until the whole room was lit up. 

It was enormous – not nearly as large as the Warehouse, obviously, but equally filled with rows upon rows of shelves, some open, others secured; some wood, others stone or metal; all occupied. 

Penelope turned towards her visitors. “Welcome,” she said, flinging her arm wide, “to the Archive of Things.”

“The Archive of… _Things_?” Helena repeated, feeling slightly befuddled.

Diana’s face was bright with wonder. “It’s where we store items,” she declared. “Not just any things,” she added quickly upon seeing Helena’s continued confusion, “these aren’t our stacks of firewood.”

Penelope laughed. “Not quite, no. Here, we store an example of any thing that has been found on Themyscira, and even of the things we brought with us when we came here.”

“And maybe we will find here what you need for your-” Diana broke off, looking at Helena questioningly, gesturing with her hand. “The thing. For your force shield?”

“Battery!” Helena exclaimed, catching Diana’s hand, immediately just as excited as Diana had been. “Oh my goodness, yes!” She turned to Penelope. “I have tried using sea water as an electrolyte, but it’s too impure. I need a purer acid. Do you have such a substance?”

Penelope tapped her chin for a moment, then nodded and turned. “Wait here, please,” she called over her shoulder as she headed towards the aisles. 

Helena looked around herself, burning with curiosity. Then she laughed out loud when she saw that Diana was doing the same. “I wonder who of us is supposed to keep the other from putting her nose where it shouldn’t be,” she said dryly.

The sound of Diana’s laughter was as delightful as always. “Don’t be deceived,” she warned, still laughing, “Penelope is fearsome with a spear. She’ll spit and roast us if we don’t behave.”

A moment later, Penelope was back, carrying a glass jar. “This is acidic water,” she announced. “It’s not as strongly acidic as lemon juice, but we don’t store lemon juice in here,” she added. 

Helena closed her eyes in disappointment. Diana noticed. “Not what you need?” she asked. 

Taking a deep breath, Helena shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid it isn’t. I’ll admit I hadn’t even thought of lemon juice, but I do remember that I’ll need a stronger acid than even that.” She pondered for a moment, trying to remember if there were any other substances that could be of help, substances that this place could possibly hold. When nothing came up, she bowed slightly to Penelope. “Thank you for your time, Historian,” she said and sighed. “I’m afraid we needlessly wasted it.”

As they walked back towards the keep’s central corridors, they passed along a gallery with a row of open, high arched windows in one side, and Diana paused, leaning her arms against a windowsill that was sheltered from the rain by an overhanging level overhead. 

“It’s unfortunate that the weather is so dreary today,” she said. “This is one of my favorite views.” 

This side of the keep was indeed overlooking a breathtaking vista: a mountainous cliff to the left, speckled with sparse growth, fell away sharply into the sea. A few steep rocks that poked their heads out of the water bore witness to the fact that the cliff side continued to descend underwater. Both sea and cliff were being drenched by rain that had turned into a downpour.

“Seen from here on a sunny day, the sea is a blue so deep it’s black, almost,” Diana said mournfully. “Some people argue that rain has its own beauty, but I haven’t found it yet.”

Helena huffed. “I know people like that, too. In England, it’s considered patriotic to at the very least not mind the rain, or find it fortifying, or some such nonsense. Situated as our beloved isles are, we get a lot of rain,” she elaborated when Diana looked at her, nose wrinkled in confusion. Finding a small pebble, Helena tossed it into the rain, which swallowed it before she saw it hit the ground. Her eyes roamed the view, found the side of the keep and followed the towering walls upwards until-

Her breath caught. Gutters. There were gutters hanging from the roofs, gutters running down the walls. Gutters made of- “Lead!” 

Diana jumped at the exclamation. “Lead?”

Helena was already running back where they had come from. “Lead, Diana! Lead!”

A moment later, she stood in front of the historian, breathing hard. “Lead,” she repeated again. “Do you have lead here?” As the historian nodded with wide eyes, Helena punched the air. “Aces! Oh – and glass! But I’ll get that in the workshops.” She whirled to Diana, excited as the memories paraded through her brain. “Lead, glass, and sulfuric acid! And I know you don’t have that here, but I can _make_ it, I only need pyrite!” She whirled back again, facing a still open-mouthed Penelope, and asked, “Do you happen to have pyrite here? Oh, and copper! And rubber!” 

Penelope laughed. “Yes to all of those, except the last.” she replied immediately. “I’ve never heard that term.”

“It’s also known as caoutchouc,” Helena replied. “It’s made from the sap of certain plants or trees, sap that contains latex. It’s…” she cast around for more descriptions that might help Penelope realize what she meant. “It’s pliant, bouncy, it stretches enormously – no?” She sighed when Penelope shook her head. “Never mind that, then. The other things, though – would you be so kind as to get them for me?”

Penelope nodded. “How much do you need?”

“Well, I-” Helena stopped short. “What do you mean, how much do I need? How much do you store?” she asked back.

Penelope’s smile grew mysterious. “As much as _we_ need,” she said simply. 

Helena narrowed her eyes. Then another realization hit her. “You have something that replicates things,” she breathed, and suddenly Penelope looked uncomfortable. 

The historian exchanged a look with Diana, who shrugged wide-eyed. “I have no idea what Helena is talking about,” Diana said. 

“You do, though,” Helena pressed. “Don’t you, Penelope?” She narrowed her eyes. “It can’t be Khallikan’s Chessboard, that’s in the Warehouse. Tell me, what is it?”

Penelope looked at Diana again for guidance. “Princess,” she implored. 

“Penelope, you can trust Helena. I do.” The simple statement took Helena’s breath away for a moment. 

Penelope seemed to dither for a moment, then squared her shoulders. “So be it, then,” she huffed. Then she turned to Helena. “Yes, we do have a device that duplicates things,” she said. “It was given to us by Hestia, to sustain life on Themyscira more easily.”

Helena snapped her fingers. “That is how you can serve so much bread,” she crowed. “You duplicate the wheat, don’t you!” 

Penelope nodded while Diana looked astonished. “It only makes one duplicate each time,” Penelope explained, “and only of inanimate things. But duplicating a bushel of wheat? That’s done every hour every day after the harvest is in. You are right, Helena; Themyscira could never feed as many Amazons otherwise.”

“How come I never knew that?” Diana demanded. 

“I cannot tell you why your mother has not yet chosen to not reveal this to you,” Penelope said, her face averted. “It’s not a very closely guarded secret, after all. You can’t carry bushel after bushel of wheat out of a keep that doesn’t have a wheat field and expect people not to notice.”

“Are there other restrictions?” Helena asked, leaning forward. “And… can I see it?”

“Yes, there are, and no, that you cannot,” Penelope said. “Access to it is regulated; any request for a duplicate has to be approved by my colleagues and me, or even the general or the queen, depending on what item it is. Then it is us who carry them out. As to restrictions, the item can’t have a footprint larger than a yard squared, and as I said it cannot be animated. In either case, it will not work. We haven’t run into any other limitations yet.”

“Oh, my…” Helena breathed with gleaming eyes. She turned to Diana again. God-given or artifact, Helena did not care. All she was interested in was what it indicated for her work. “That means I’ll only have to construct one working model, and then we can replicate enough for the whole army!” 

Penelope raised a hand. “That would be one of the uses that’d need to be approved by General Antiope,” she cautioned. “But from what I’ve heard,” she added with a wry smile, “that probably won’t present a problem.”

The rain had let up when they left the keep. Helena could not keep the bounce from her step as Diana and she walked down the street, a bag with the requested materials in hand. “Oh, this is simply brilliant!” she exclaimed for the fourth or possibly fifth time as they turned towards the glassblowers’ workshops. 

“Inanna, you are beautiful when you laugh, Helena,” a familiar voice called out as they came nearer. 

“Siruya!” Diana greeted the other woman. “Helena has found a solution to her problem!”

“I figured that your good cheer would stem from that,” Siruya beamed at Helena. “Congratulations!”

Helena rolled her eyes and tilted her head. “Oh, it wasn’t anything I did,” she retorted. “My memory just finally connected a few dots, and here we are!” She flourished the bag. “I can’t wait to-”

“Diana!” someone shouted behind them. 

“Niobe!” Diana shouted back and laughed. “Don’t tell me my mother sent you to fetch me! I’m not eight anymore, you know.”

The dark-skinned Amazon laughed as she came closer. “No, you aren’t, bird, but your mother still wants to see you.” She pointed over her shoulder at the keep. “Straight away, if you please.”

Diana turned to her two companions. “I do feel like I’m still a child sometimes,” she sighed. “I will see you later this afternoon? In your workshop?”

“Not me,” Siruya declined, “I’ve been called to Furuka’s farm; they are trying out a new technique to sow and want me to document it.” She smiled apologetically. “I would invite you both to dine with me, but I am not certain we will be done by then. We can take breakfast together tomorrow, though?” When Helena and Diana both agreed, Siruya left quickly, and Diana turned to Helena. Niobe chuckled, but was obviously impatient to go, so Helena replied quickly. 

“I will be either at my workshop or at Trigona’s or Eudia’s,” she said, and Diana nodded, raised her hand in farewell, and left with Niobe.


	9. Chapter 9

This time, the one with the filthy temper in the workshop was Diana. She strode in barely an hour after she had left Helena and Siruya, noticed that Helena’s attention was focused on an array of crucibles and alembics, and started pacing near the door, out of the way.

Not out of sight, though. Helena straightened up and sighed. “Are you alright, Diana?” she asked, extinguishing the small fire with a sure-handed shovel of sand. Her friends had helped her when she was in need. However excited Helena was about making progress towards her battery, it could wait a moment or two while she helped Diana.

“No, I am _not_ alright,” Diana spat immediately. “My…” she broke off and took a deep breath. “I am my mother’s daughter,” she pressed through grated teeth. “My mother is queen of the Amazons, and I am their princess. How am I supposed to fill this role adequately when my mother keeps secrets from me?”

Helena raised her eyebrows and turned fully towards her friend, offering the closer of the two stools with a wave of her hand. Diana ignored it and kept on pacing. “I take it you spoke with your mother about the Archive of Things and its duplicator?” Helena asked.

“Yes!” Shout and whirl were instantaneous. Diana pointed wildly at the keep. “And she was angry – _she_ was _angry_ that I had learned about it!” With a frustrated yell, Diana punched the closest wall – right next to the stain Helena’s last failed battery had left the other day, as it happened. The young warrior groaned when the punch left a sizeable hole, but waved Helena’s solicitous advance away. She turned to the workbench, put her balled fists on its worktop and leaned on them, grinding her jaws. “Sorry about the wall,” she pressed out after a moment. 

“Don’t worry about that,” Helena said immediately. “It’s only wattle and daub; repairing it is easy. Is your hand alright, though?” She had winced when Diana had put her fists on the work surface, not knowing what substances covered it.

“Oh! Yes, it is,” Diana replied absentmindedly. “It takes a lot more than plaster to break the skin of my knuckles.” Helena raised an eyebrow in surprise, but kept her silence, sensing that Diana had not finished her rant yet. “My mother accused _me_ of wrongdoing – the only thing I did was find out something that most Amazons already know!” She hung her head with a frustrated exhalation. “I want to do _more_ than simply train to be a warrior,” the young woman continued, sounding plaintive. “I _need_ to do more than that. I’m a member of the royal family; I have a duty to my people. And I can’t do that duty well if I don’t know what there is to know!” She looked at Helena with imploring eyes. “I don’t understand. I don’t _understand_ why-” Breaking off, Diana shook her head and hung it again. 

Helena took a deep breath, grabbed the stool and set it down next to Diana. Perching on it, she put a hand on Diana’s balled right. “I think I can offer some explanation,” she said, “but I’m not sure if you’ll like it.”

Diana turned her head, and Helena could see her frown. “Why would I not like your explanation?” she asked. 

Helena sighed. “Because some things can be hard to accept, and what I’m about to tell you might be one of the hardest.” _At least for a child to hear about her mother_ , she added in her thoughts. She gestured towards the door. “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested. 

West Point Cove was Helena’s favorite destination, and it was where she led them now. The sun was warm after the rain, and Helena folded her discarded coat and placed it on a log, creating a dry spot for her and Diana to sit on. The young Amazon declined the offer – she was pacing again. 

Helena gave her a side-long look. “If you make me dizzy, you’ll get to carry me up the slope and to my workshop.”

Diana stopped her pacing, but kept standing. “Your explanation,” she grated. “Please.”

Helena nodded. “Righty-ho, then.” She extended her legs and looked out over the sea. “When a woman becomes a mother,” she began, “it changes her. Most of the time, anyway,” she added. “There is not a single thing that applies to every human being, obviously.” She smiled grimly. “Not even that we’ll all die at some point, apparently.” She reined that thought back in. “In any case, most mothers, upon learning that they are or will be mothers, are faced with an undeniable truth: the world is a dangerous place for a child.”

Diana started to say something, stopped herself, and nodded instead. 

“When I realized that I was pregnant,” Helena continued, “I was equal parts elated and horrified. I was working at the Warehouse; I knew intimately just how dangerous the World of Man,” she nodded at the Amazon, “could be. For a while, I threw myself into endeavors to make it less so. The force shield was one of them,” she added. “But the more I worked on these inventions, the more I realized another undeniable truth: I was unable to make the world as safe for my child as I wanted it to be.”

Meeting Helena’s eyes, Diana quickly looked away and dropped to her haunches, forearms on knees. She found a twig and started twirling it in her hand, staring at the motion intently. “That must have been a harsh thing to realize,” she murmured. 

Helena huffed out a laugh. “It was beyond frustrating, seeing as I had quite a high opinion of my abilities at the time,” she said. “And it’s not as though I didn’t succeed in some things. I built a gate that would prevent a crawling or toddling child from falling down a staircase. I designed a wooden safeguard that could be fastened over electrical sockets, and crafted three dozen in one night.” She sighed again. “But even if I had succeeded in creating a completely child-safe home – at some point a child will leave its home and enter a patently unsafe world.” Her eyes followed a seagull’s dive through the air. “A mother – well, a father would, too, I suppose – wants her child to reach its full potential, and that means teaching it what she knows, and letting it find out things on its own.”

“But that’s what I-” Diana began, but Helena’s upheld hand stopped her. 

“ _At the same time_ ,” Helena continued, “a mother knows that each step a child takes towards the world, towards new knowledge, towards the fullness of its potential, is inevitably a step towards danger. And that is not a direction a mother likes to see her child walk towards, you see?” She ran a hand through her hair – she rarely put it up on Themyscira, where no one required her to, but she found herself wishing for a ribbon at least, the way the wind was tugging at it. “A mother’s fingers will always, _always_ itch to snatch her child away from danger, to keep it safe from anything that might hurt it. Knowing that this is not how a child learns, however, means that a mother constantly has to fight that instinct.” She grimaced. “And sometimes it still gets the better of her. Especially when she knows that the danger that her child is walking towards can result in more than just a scratched elbow or bruised knee.”

She breathed in deeply, the air wonderfully fresh in her lungs. “The first time Christina wanted to ride a horse, I flat-out refused, fearing she would fall and snap her neck or at the very least break every bone in her body. She would not stop asking, though, and told me how she’d heard that riding lessons always took place on a deep layer of wood shavings, and on small ponies. And since I had sworn to myself when she was born that I would not deny her something on the basis of ‘only boys are allowed to do it,’ I ran out of arguments quickly.” Helena snorted and shook her head. “I did not breathe easy the full thirty minutes that my child sat on that tiny horse. I did not breathe easy for an hour after she had climbed down, under her own power, and beamed and smiled and asked when the next lesson would be.” 

Diana nodded. “I think my mother might have felt the same way when I sat on a horse for the first time, or when she found out that Antiope had started to teach me to fight,” she said slowly. Then she started to scowl. “But I’m a grown woman now,” she insisted. “I can fight and best most Amazons; I can run faster and jump farther than any of them – I don’t need safekeeping anymore.”

Helena’s lips refused to form the smile she was aiming for. “I’m sure your mother is fully aware of that,” she said. “But I’m also sure that there are many, many moments when she looks at you and sees not a woman of twenty years, but a child of ten, or a toddler of eight months.” Her smile grew sadder, and stronger for it. “It is something you will have to forgive your mother for. She cannot help it. None of us can.” Her eyes met Diana’s, and her smile drained away. “We will always wish that the worst that could happen to you is a scratched elbow or bruised knee. We will always wish that helping you was as easy as gathering you in our arms and giving you a kiss.” Her gaze dropped to the sand. “We will always wish that we could turn back time to when you were small and we were able to protect you from any harm in the world, any monster under your bed, simply by existing.”

Her eyes went suddenly wide. “Time,” she whispered. “Turn back time!” She sprang up, stumbling in the sodden sand, her eyes frantically darting here and there, not seeing sand or beach or sea, but seeing, in her mind, shelves and stacks she knew by heart. 

“What-” Diana started to ask, confused by the sudden turn in Helena’s mood.

“I have to build a time machine!” Helena shouted. 

“Helena, no-one can-”

“Oh codswallop!” Helena cut in. “People said man couldn’t fly, and then we built hot-air balloons and gliders; true, directed flight is only a decade away at most, I am sure of it.” A wild grin crossed her face as she stood opposite Diana, hands on hips and breathing heavily. “Things are only impossible until they’re not,” she declared. “I have to get back to the Warehouse.”

“But…” Diana gestured helplessly. “Your force shield – your experiment with the lead and the pyrite! Will you at least finish that?”

For a moment, Helena hesitated. Diana was looking at her beseechingly. But from her face, from her eyes, Christina Wells shouted for her mother’s help.

Helena dropped her gaze and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.


	10. Chapter 10

As the time machine wound down, Helena thumped her chair’s armrest in frustration. Had there been anything within reach, she would have thrown it – with a pang of conflicting emotions, she remembered the glass jar smashing against the wall on that morning in her workshop on Themyscira. 

She had failed. Again. 

Then a voice called out her name, and she froze. 

“Helena, are you- goodness!” Caturanga turned the corner and stopped upon seeing the time machine and Helena strapped into it. “Agent Wells, what are you doing?”

“Oh, it’s ‘Agent Wells’ now, is it?” Helena hissed. 

“It is when you seem to be doing things that you shouldn’t be doing – _in the Warehouse_ ,” the old agent said. There was no accusation in his voice, though, not even disappointment – only sadness. He stepped closer, prepared to help her unbuckle the belt that held her head, but raised his hands in appeasement when she scowled at him. His glance fell on the large clock on the side of the device, set to July 14, 1899, and his expression turned stricken. “Is this what I think it is?” And, when she did not answer, he pressed, “Helena? Is this a time machine?”

“Yes!” It exploded out of her. “Yes, I have built what others only dreamed of; yes, I have opened up time and found a way for my mind to travel to the past; yes, this is a time machine, but it – doesn’t – matter!” Finally free from all straps, she jumped out of the chair and began pacing and gesticulating, fearing that if she did not keep in motion, she might just crumple and cry. “This might very well be humanity’s greatest invention to date, but it’s pointless!” She kicked the podium it stood on. “Useless!” She whacked the clock mechanism’s chassis. “Futile, inadequate, worthless!” 

“Helena. Helena!” Caturanga tried to address her through her outburst. “Tell me what happened.” He gingerly stepped onto the podium and pointed to one of the two chairs. “Is it safe to sit?”

“What?!” Helena whirled around and scowled. Then she sighed, shook her head and schooled her features into a calmer expression. “Yes. Yes, it is deactivated now, and quite safe to sit in.” She, too, got onto the machine and took the other seat, resting her forearms on her knees and her forehead in her hands in a scandalously unladylike fashion. 

“I understand your motivation for building this,” Caturanga said lightly. “And from your reaction just now I deduce you were unsuccessful?”

Helena closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “I was.” The confession felt leaden, paralyzing. She sucked in a breath. “It seems I can change details, but not the course of history,” she said, contempt puckering her mouth. 

Caturanga sighed. “How many times?” His voice was still exceedingly gentle. 

Helena did not move a muscle. “Twenty-one,” she replied tonelessly. Twenty-one times twenty-two hours and nineteen minutes. Twenty-one times that she had tried to save Christina. Twenty-one times that she had failed.

“And how many more times will it take-” Caturanga began.

Helena’s temper flared up again. “I will _never_ give up on my Christina, you know that!” She stared at him hard for a moment before dropping her head into her hands again.

“-for you to come to terms with what happened?” Caturanga ended his sentence, still in that mild voice bare of all recrimination. He sighed again. “Two months ago when you came back to us, you seemed changed. Your grief seemed changed, and I dared to hope it had changed towards healing.” A rustling noise told Helena that he sat forward in his chair. “It has been almost a year now since Christina departed this world. Surely she would not have wanted you to suffer so?”

“She would want to be alive!” Again, Helena’s head came up; again, she glared at her mentor. She flung her hand out in a gesture that invoked the entire Warehouse surrounding them, not just the small out-of-the-way corner she had found for her experimentation. “This, as you keep saying, is a place where miracles happen. This is where we store things that can _make_ miracles happen. If there is any place in the world where a person could conceivably change history, it’s here! I just have to find the right way to do it!”

“I can’t-”

“Don’t tell me you can’t let me do it,” Helena snarled. “I’m not asking for permission.”

“I understand,” Caturanga said and nodded slowly. Putting his hands on his knees, he pushed himself up from his chair. 

“That was too easy. Are you going to stop me?” Head tilted, Helena eyed the old agent suspiciously. “Report me to the Regents?”

Caturanga shook his head, a sad smile on his face that made him look his years. “No,” he said simply. “You have chosen this path to healing. It is a painful and difficult one, and I will not make it harder. If you have used this contraption twenty-one times already without hurting yourself or bringing down the Warehouse, I daresay there is no physical danger involved.” He strode around the device. “You are quite right; this is a most ingenious machine.” Caturanga threw Helena a small smile from across the podium. “You are a most ingenious woman, after all.”

Eyes still narrowed, Helena replied, “But?”

“No ‘but,’ my dear,” Caturanga said. He looked around himself. “I will be going back to the main office,” he announced. “You chose a good place to set this up; I doubt anyone has been here in over a decade.” He gave Helena a nod. “Good aftern- oh!” He stopped, slapped his forehead, and turned back to her. “The reason I was seeking you out – Agent Wolcott informed me that he has fallen ill and will not be able to handle the retrieval in Cardiff. A regrettable circumstance, but sadly, just as unchangeable as history, I’m afraid. Sometimes a person simply cannot go where they planned to go. I was going to ask you if you wanted the mission, but-” he pointed towards the time machine, “I see you are otherwise occupied. Good afternoon, Agent.” And he left.

Head still tilted, Helena watched him go. Then she blinked slowly, and her face slackened with sudden inspiration. “Not go where they planned to go…” she breathed. Then she whirled around to her time machine. She pondered the date dial – what day had it been that she had decided to send Christina to Paris?

Suddenly, she felt nauseous. Dizziness swept through her and made her sit down hard on the podium. Was her body reacting to the continued use of the machine? Should she call it a day and catch a few hours of sleep before trying again? She rubbed her hands across her face and temples and sat for a moment longer, then stood up, decision made. She would continue. She had to save Christina from drowning, come what may.

She was in the process of strapping herself into the seat again when she heard her name called out. She froze. 

“Helena, are you- goodness!” Caturanga turned the corner and stopped upon seeing the time machine and Helena in its seat. “Agent Wells, what are you doing?”

“Oh, it’s ‘Agent Wells’ now, is it?” Helena hissed. 

“It is when you seem to be doing things that you shouldn’t be doing – _in the Warehouse_ ,” the old agent said. There was no accusation in his voice, though, not even disappointment – only sadness. He stepped closer, prepared to lend her a hand for stepping off the podium, but raised his hands in appeasement when she scowled at him. His glance fell on the large clock on the side of the device, set to August 1, 1899, and his expression turned stricken. “Is this what I think it is?” And, when she did not answer, he pressed, “Helena? Is this a time machine?”

“Yes!” It exploded out of her. She began pacing and gesticulating, fearing that if she did not keep in motion, she might just crumple and cry. “Yes, I have built what others only dreamed of; yes, I have opened up time and found a way for my mind to travel to the past; yes, this is a time machine, but it – doesn’t – matter!” She kicked the chair she had been sitting on a moment before. “This might very well be humanity’s greatest invention to date, but it’s pointless!” She kicked the podium it stood on. “Useless!” She whacked the clock mechanism’s chassis. “Futile, inadequate, worthless!” 

“Helena. Helena!” Caturanga tried to address her through her outburst. “Tell me what happened.” He gingerly stepped onto the podium and pointed to one of the two chairs. “Is it safe to sit?”

“What?!” Helena whirled around and scowled. Then she sighed, shook her head and schooled her features into a calmer expression. “Yes. Yes, it is deactivated now, and quite safe to sit in.” She, too, got onto the machine and took the other seat, resting her forearms on her knees and her forehead in her hands in a scandalously unladylike fashion. 

“I understand your motivation for building this,” Caturanga said lightly. “And from your reaction just now I deduce you were unsuccessful?”

Helena closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “I was.” The confession felt leaden, paralyzing. She sucked in a breath. “It seems I can change details, but not the course of history,” she said, contempt puckering her mouth. 

Caturanga sighed. “How many times?” His voice was still exceedingly gentle. 

Helena did not move a muscle. “Twenty-three,” she replied tonelessly. Twenty- three times twenty-two hours and nineteen minutes. Twenty- three times that she had tried to save Christina. Twenty- three times that she had failed.

“And how many more times will it take-” Caturanga began.

Helena’s temper flared up again. “I will _never_ give up on my Christina, you know that!” She stared at him hard for a moment before dropping her head into her hands again.

“-for you to come to terms with what happened?” Caturanga ended his sentence, still in that mild voice bare of all recrimination. He sighed again. “In February when we commemorated that six months had passed since Christina’s passing, you seemed changed. Your grief seemed changed, and I dared to hope it had changed towards healing.” A rustling noise told Helena that he sat forward in his chair. “It has been almost a year now since Christina departed this world. Surely she would not have wanted you to suffer so?”

“She would want to be alive!” Again, Helena’s head came up; again, she glared at her mentor. She flung her hand out in a gesture that invoked the entire Warehouse surrounding them, not just the small out-of-the-way corner she had found for her experimentation. “This, as you keep saying, is a place where miracles happen. This is where we store things that can _make_ miracles happen. If there is any place in the world where a person could conceivably change history, it’s here! I just have to find the right way to do it!”

“I can’t-”

“Don’t tell me you can’t let me do it,” Helena snarled. She pulled her Tesla and aimed it at Caturanga. “I will not be stopped; not by you nor by anyone else.”

“Helena, you-” 

She pulled the trigger. Caturanga dove to the floor and rolled under the shot and towards her with a speed and grace that were astonishing for a man his age. When he came up, he struck Helena’s arm so hard that she lost her grip on the weapon. It flew away between the crates that she had hauled over to further hide her time machine. 

With a frustrated grunt, she launched herself at him, aiming for his throat. Her hands locked around it, and she pressed them together. Then her eyes met his.

Caturanga’s face had been impassionate the whole time that he had fought her. His eyes held no anger now, no mortal fear – only sadness and acceptance. 

Their willingness hit Helena like a brick. She dropped her hands instantly, turned, and began to retch. She had come this close to killing her closest friend! Caturanga had saved her life, literally and figuratively – if not for him, she would not work here. 

“I… am sorry,” she gasped between heaves. She heard Caturanga cough. It drove her shame home even more deeply. “I am so sorry.” She froze once more when arms wrapped themselves around her, but their intention was not to crush, but simply to hold. It was then that she realized that she was crying. 

Caturanga murmured something unintelligible in Hindi as he held her. 

“How… _how_ can you be so calm about me trying to murder you?” Helena asked into his shoulder, swallowing and sniffling. 

She felt the old man’s smile. Then a handkerchief was held up in front of her face. “Because you didn’t succeed,” he said simply. “I will admit that having this played a part, too.” A Tesla was held up in front of her face, then dropped out of sight again. “I’m more concerned what the attempt has done to you than what it has done to me.” Caturanga straightened and held Helena at arm’s length, subjecting her to a searching gaze.

Helena found it supremely difficult not to look away. Decades of working for the Warehouse had honed Caturanga’s already formidable skills at reading people to a very fine edge. On top of that, there was no one who knew Helena better than him. She felt as though her soul was laid bare before his eyes – and realized she did not mind. 

He seemed to find something in what he saw, for he nodded, suddenly. “Let me show you something,” he said and stood up, easily pulling her up with him. 

She chuckled and handed him his handkerchief. “Truly, you’re an old man only when it suits you, my friend,” she teased.

A genial grin spread over his features. “Of course! It is so much easier that way. Come, follow me.” He pulled her down one corridor, then another, through turns and aisles that she had never seen, even down a few flights of stairs at one time. Whenever she started to ask about their destination, he shushed her, though.

At last, they arrived at a large double door with an equally sizeable padlock. Caturanga took a key from one of his pockets and opened it. He gestured to Helena for help, and together they pushed one of the doors open. Then the old agent flipped a light switch.

Helena gasped. “What-”

Caturanga grinned again, the spark of mischief now fully fledged. “Et voilà, I believe is the right expression at this point,” he said and spread his arms wide. “It is one of the Warehouse’s newer, and yet very old, mysteries – the ship that suddenly appeared.”

Helena’s ears rang, and she felt weak. She knew this ship. “Argion,” she breathed. 

Caturanga turned from where he was inspecting the prow, and frowned at her. “I know the name of this ship,” he said, “since it’s written on the side.” He pointed. “But this is a very peculiar form of written Ancient Greek – how do you know it?”

“I…” Helena’s knees finally gave way, and she sat down not too gracefully on the floor. Thoughts and images flooded her mind and made her dizzy – memories, she suddenly realized. Of- “Themyscira,” she breathed, and swallowed hard. She had spent weeks on Paradise Island, and had left, on this ship, to build her time machine because Christina had… died in Paris? Yes, she had… been murdered, not drowned. In Paris, in July. “I… I did it.” She looked up at Caturanga, who had taken a few steps towards her in concern. Helena felt feverish, unreal. She reached out and he took her hand; a solid piece of warm humanity to cling to. “I did it!” 

“You changed history?” His voice held a peculiar mix of shrewdness and concern. 

“Yes!” She shifted forwards, and he helped her to her feet only to be wrapped in an embrace. She could feel herself shaking in her arms. “I changed history, but-” Her shaking intensified.

“But you didn’t change the fact that Christina died,” Caturanga supplied very, very gently. 

“Why?” Helena threw back her head and wailed. “Why?! What kind of a bastard is Time, to allow for this change but not that one? What have I done to Fate to deserve this? What in the world has Christina done to anyone to deserve this?!”

“Helena-” Caturanga began.

“I need to get back to my time machine,” Helena said, pushing herself away from him. Or trying to – he kept hold of her shoulders, trying to catch her gaze. 

“No, Helena.” His voice was still gentle, but there was steel in his gaze. 

“I have to-”

“What you have to do, right now, is take a break,” Caturanga insisted. “Have a good meal, have a full night’s sleep. Come back to this in the morning, with fresh eyes and mind.” 

At the mention of food, her stomach growled. Caturanga chuckled, and Helena sighed and stopped struggling against his hold. 

Later, after dinner with him and Sita, Helena and Caturanga stood in the back yard of Caturanga’s home. Caturanga was smoking a pipe, and Helena held a sifter of brandy. As they watched Venus rise and the stars come out, Helena suddenly remembered the Assyrian word for ‘star,’ remembered when and how she had learned it. The sea goddess saves drowning children and brings them to Themyscira. Could it be possible? She turned to Caturanga, fresh excitement almost succeeding in chasing away the post-dinner sleepiness.

“Caturanga, my friend,” she said, “I am going to need your help.”


	11. Chapter 11

As Diana sat down for lunch break with her sword sisters, a cry came from the West Point lookout „Ship!” And then, “ _Argion!_ ”

“Finally,” Antiope, at the head of the table, thumped its surface. “I wonder what happened.”

Apparently, many people did. There was a throng of Amazons already craning their heads when Diana, Antiope, and most of their training group made their way to the jetty on Landfall Beach. As they strode through the crowd, Diana could not help but hear the murmurs. Most had to do with how long it had taken the ship to return to Themyscira, and theories abounded as to the reasons. Then another message spread through the crowd. “Someone’s on board. Someone is aboard _Argion!_ ”

Diana’s eyes grew wide. Could it be? She pushed harder to get through to the jetty. Then a thought hit her, and she turned around. “Venelia – will you run and find Siruya and tell her about this?” 

Venelia laughed. “Do you really believe she doesn’t know yet? I bet you tomorrow’s lunch that they’re on their way down here already.” 

“Accepted. You’re probably going to win in any case.” Diana grinned and resumed her attempt to get to the jetty. “Helena!” she cried out in joy when she was close enough to see that it really was the Englishwoman returning. 

Antiope, right at Diana’s elbow, laughed out loud. “I told Hippolyta not to underestimate that woman. It seems I was right.”

Helena stood amidships as _Argion_ came in, head held high, one hand around the mast, one foot on a crate. The whole ship was stacked with them, Diana saw, fighting to contain her excitement. As the ship approached the jetty, Helena left her perch, stepped to the railing and grabbed a coil of rope. “I don’t know much about sailing,” she called out, “but I do know this much!” And she tossed one end of the rope towards the many waiting hands. _Argion_ was towed in quickly, and Diana stood ready to help Helena step off the ship. 

“Hold it,” Antiope called out before Helena could take Diana’s outstretched hands. The general pointed to the many crates. “What’s all this?”

“Oh come now, Aunt, Helena’s not here to bring harm to our shores,” Diana said and nodded for Helena to take hand. 

“On the contrary,” Helena said, grasping it firmly. Still, she did not move further forwards – Antiope was formidable, Helena knew. And while there was a question burning in her, a small sliver of hope that had brought her here all the way from London, it didn’t do to aggravate the second most powerful woman of the island. “I have brought things that I believe will be of use to you. Among them the last items and substances I need to finish the force shield. I can have a working model on your desk in two days, if you let me.”

From the corners of her eyes, Diana saw Antiope straighten. “Welcome to Themyscira,” the general said, and a cheer went up among the Amazons. “We will unload and inspect what you brought before you’ll be allowed to work with it, though.” Antiope half-turned. “Menalippe, have a tent set up on the beach for that purpose,” she ordered over her shoulder.

“Yes, general,” the lieutenant said and left at once. 

Helena had raised her eyebrows at Antiope’s precaution, but then she nodded and gripped Diana’s fingers more closely. A moment later, she stood on solid ground – well, on a wooden pier, Diana corrected herself, rolling her eyes at herself as she threw her arms around Helena. “Welcome back,” she cried. “Oh, welcome back, Helena!” Grasping the other woman by the shoulders, Diana beamed down at her. “So much has happened while you were gone, and I can’t wait to tell you!”

Diana could see Helena’s breath catch in her throat, could see Helena’s pupils dilate with sudden emotion. She laughed out loud, turned, and pulled Helena along behind her towards the beach.

Then someone at the back of the throng shouted, “They’re here!” and the whole crowd cheered again and moved as one, clearing a path to show two people walking towards Diana and Helena, holding hands – one tall and slender in a garment as bright as the sun, the other small and sturdy, in a girl’s frock. 

“Mummy!” The cry pierced the air. The girl let go of Siruya’s hand and flew towards them as fast as she could. 

Helena, eyes wild, mouth open, dropped to her knees. “Christina!” Diana had never heard a voice as raw with emotion as this. She threw Helena a slightly apprehensive look and realized that she had never seen a face as overcome with emotion as this. Quickly, Diana took a step closer to the kneeling woman and put a steadying hand on Helena’s shoulder. 

Helena did not even notice the gesture. She only had eyes for the child that was running towards her. When Christina flung herself into her mother’s arms, the cheer that went up from the assembled Amazons on the beach was deafening, but Diana was certain that Helena did not hear it over the happy laughter of her daughter.

-_-_-

Helena stood in the small hallway of Siruya’s quarters, touching the wall behind the door lintel as if to make sure that this place really existed, that she really was here, that Christina really was calling this ‘home.’ Her daughter had run ahead of her and Siruya, going on about how she had to tidy her room in order to make it presentable for her mother – something that had caused raised eyebrows in both adults following her. Christina had shown not the slightest hesitation as she was running, obviously well at home in the streets of Themyscira and the hallways of its keep. She had, at every corner, stopped to look behind her and make sure her mother was still following, still there – at least Helena hoped that her daughter’s gaze had been for her. 

“She missed you,” Siruya said, peering around the corner of the sitting room. She reached out a hand towards Helena. “Come, sit with me,” she offered.

Helena pushed herself off the wall and walked over on shaky legs, grateful to sink into one of the cushions on the floor. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth to say something, realized she had no idea what to say, and shut her mouth again. When she shook her head at herself, Siruya chuckled. 

“This is going to take a while to get used to,” the chronicler said. “If my Astarte came back to me, I would be just as overwhelmed.” She took Helena’s hand in her own. “It is real, believe me. And your daughter is truly a wonderful child.”

Again, Helena opened her mouth only to shut it again. She blinked, trying to sort the thoughts flying around in her mind into some semblance of order. “It is true then?” it finally burst out of her. “Thetis brought her here?”

Siruya’s smile grew softer. “Yes. Yes, she did.” 

“Oh, it’s _that_ story.” Christina appeared in the doorway, giving the two seated women an impatient look. “Can I show you my room now, Mummy?”

Siruya held up a hand as Helena started to rise. “Why don’t you come over here and sit with your mother while I tell the story? She hasn’t heard it yet, and I think she needs to.”

“Righty-ho.” Christina quickly bounded over and sat down on the cushion next to Helena. There was no hesitation when she leaned into Helena’s side, no hesitation when Helena’s arm came up to pull her daughter closer, no hesitation when her other hand came up to run through Christina’s hair that was falling from a dissolving ponytail. There was no hesitation, and Helena reveled in that realization. It made up for the fact that her arms and fingers were shaking no matter how much she willed them to be steady. She bowed her head towards her daughter’s hair and breathed in. Christina might be using a different soap – of course she was, Helena chided herself – but underneath that, this was the scent that had been missing from Helena’s life for far too long. 

Siruya looked at the two of them and smiled. “Usually when Thetis brings children to our shores, we help these children regain their strength and then send them back to their families with Thetis’ help. Before they leave, for each child an Amazon is chosen or volunteers as their Guardian of Inspiration. The Guardian grants the child wisdom and resilience to do good in the World of Man – by this practice, the Amazons try to fulfil their duty of helping to guide man to a better understanding even while removed from their world.” Siruya’s smile widened. “You need to know that when Christina arrived here, no one knew her – no one knew you. You had never set foot on Themyscira before, and so Christina Wells was a complete stranger to us.” She chuckled and held up a hand when Helena made as if to interrupt her, and Helena acquiesced, if grudgingly. “Then Castalia, our oracle, spoke up in the Senate,” Siruya went on, “and named me Guardian for Christina, I was thunderstruck. I’m not a born Amazon, and usually they are chosen, not us who came after. Castalia insisted, though. Then she told the Senate that Christina needed to stay and not be sent back.” The chronicler laughed. “If people had been astounded before, when Castalia pointed to me, there was uproar among the senators at her words now. No child should be taken from her parents, many argued. Castalia remained adamant, however. She told the Senate in no uncertain terms that that was what she had seen, and that great misfortune would befall Themyscira if the vision were disobeyed.”

Helena’s jaw tensed. “A vision.” Her nostrils flared as she inhaled sharply. “A _vision_ made you keep my daughter from me for-”

Siruya squeezed her hand. “Yes, Helena, it did. Please let me finish telling this story, and maybe you will understand Castalia’s words better.”

Christina stirred and looked up at her mother. “It’s alright, Mummy,” she said. “You’re here now, and everything is alright, yes?”

Again, Helena took a deep breath. “Go on,” she said tersely, not quite decided if everything _was_ indeed alright.

Siruya could obviously read Helena’s misgivings in her face, but after a moment, the chronicler nodded and continued. “Since I was chosen as Guardian, Christina stayed with me.” She looked down at the child with a fond grin. Helena’s heart pulsed with envy when she saw Christina return that grin. Siruya’s hand tightened around Helena’s fingers again. “I swore to be a good Guardian for her. It wasn’t easy in the beginning; you didn’t understand why you couldn’t go back,” she said to Christina, who shook her head forcefully.

“Mummy, I always wanted to go back to you,” Christina declared, looking up at Helena anxiously. “Even when Diana asked me to ride on a horse with her, I hated it and only ever wanted to go back.”

Helena could not help but smile. “I don’t believe you hated that,” she said gently. “I do believe that you missed me and wanted to return more than anything. And that’s good to know.” She touched the tip of Christina’s nose with a finger. “Missing someone doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to enjoy anything in the meantime, you understand? Do not ever feel bad about the things you enjoyed here while you waited for me.” When Christina’s features relaxed and she nodded, Helena smiled again and said, “I can’t wait for you to tell me all about everything you did as soon as Siruya has finished telling her story.” She looked pointedly over at Siruya, and with another impatient nod, Christina settled against her to listen to the Amazon chronicler. 

Siruya smiled at both of them. “You are so similar that it’s uncanny,” she said. “And that brings me to the strangest part of my story – the part where I suddenly started remembering things that had never happened.”

Helena straightened slightly, tightening her arms around Christina. “That does sound ominous,” she stated. 

Siruya shook her head quickly. “Oh, nothing of menace,” she reassured Helena. “But all of a sudden I remembered a stranger washing up on our shores in March, when in reality no outsider had appeared since Christina arrived. I remembered the stranger’s face, and her ingenuity; I remembered that she and Niobe built a workshop for her to experiment in, in order to build something for General Antiope. I remembered the stranger’s name. And I knew that there was no-one with that face and that name on Themyscira; I know there was no workshop and no experiments and no mysterious project for the general. So I took all these odd memories and brought them to Epione, wondering if I was losing my mind.” Siruya chuckled to herself. “She looked as though Zeus’ had struck her with a lightning bolt. Then she told me to seek out Diana, and talk to her about these memories, and to go see Castalia afterwards. 

“It was my turn to be stunned when Diana told me she had the same memories, and that her mother and aunt shared some of them, too. Then Diana took me to see the queen. Queen Hippolyta summoned her sister, Niobe, Epione, and Castalia, and revealed to us that _Argion_ had disappeared. Between this undeniable fact, the oracle’s vision, and our memories, we reasoned that something must have happened in another… time thread, we called it. A time thread that was progressing right alongside ours but slightly different. From there, we reasoned, something that was spilling over its events to us as memories of things that happened to our counterparts there.” Siruya stopped and looked questioningly at Helena. “That is when Castalia revealed to us that in order to preserve both sets of memories, Christina _had_ to stay here.”

Helena felt her daughter take a deep breath. “Castalia said the world might crack and shatter like an egg if I went home to you, Mummy. I didn’t want it to crack and shatter like an egg, so I said it was alright to stay.” Christina looked hopefully up at her mother. “That was right, wasn’t it? Even if we missed each other? Cracking the world like an egg would have been worse, wouldn’t it?”

Helena nodded. “Absolutely,” she said firmly and kissed her daughter’s forehead. 

“So you’re not angry at Castalia anymore?” Christina’s eyes were still pleading. “She’s promised to show me how to tickle fish, and I really want to learn that.”

“Tickling fish, hm? I guess if she has such worthwhile skills to bestow, I can’t be angry at her.”

Christina beamed. “Aces!”

Siruya leaned forward, drawing Helena’s attention. “Does all of this make more sense to you now?” the chronicler asked.

Helena’s smile faded, and she hung her head. “More than you realize,” she said ruefully. “It was me. I built a time machine. And… and I changed time,” she said hoarsely. “I remembered, five days ago, that…” she looked down at her daughter. “That you had died, my love, but not of drowning. And that I had tried so many ways to revive you.”

“Did you try to go to Hades, like Orpheus?” Christina asked with wide eyes. 

Helena half-shrugged, smiling. “I tried to find the way there, so to speak. But it didn’t work. And then it happened that I came here to Themyscira, and while I was here, I realized that if reviving you wouldn’t work, maybe I could build a time machine and save you _before_ you died.”

Christina’s eyes grew even rounder, and Helena marveled how easily her daughter accepted this fantastic story. “And you did, didn’t you, Mummy? You just said you changed time. But…” she frowned. “Why did I end up here then, and not with you in London?”

Helena cupped her daughter’s face. “I am so, so sorry, my love,” she whispered. “I wasn’t good enough. I tried and tried to save your life, but I couldn’t. Then Caturanga gave me the idea to try and prevent you from going to the place where you would…” she cleared her throat. “Where you would die. I did succeed – and then you and I went on vacation together instead, and we took a trip on a ship, and you fell off, and…” Helena broke off, breathing hard. Seeing her daughter’s anxious eyes, she tried to smile, but did not manage more than a grimace. Looking aside in shame, she murmured, “Seems I am able to change time, but powerless to prevent my daughter’s death.”

“But you did,” Siruya said gently. Her hand found Helena’s check and pulled equally softly, bidding her to turn around. “Christina is safe and sound, my friend. Look at her – she sits right here. She learned to ride a horse all by herself, she made countless new friends; she is alive and happy.” 

Helena’s eyes closed, trying to tame the tears that filled them. She could feel Christina in her arms, could feel the avid nod that accompanied Siruya’s words, knew exactly what expression her daughter’s features would hold, should she look at her. “I know,” she whispered. “And if I’m not mistaken, she grew two inches.” _And I wasn’t here to see it,_ she added in her thoughts.

“Three!” Christina corrected proudly. “Three inches, Mummy!”

“Is that a fact?” Helena replied automatically. She could feel Christina squirming again, and half-feared that her daughter would get up and fetch a yard stick, or the Amazonian equivalent. 

But instead of leaving, Christina burrowed into her mother’s arms and returned Helena’s embrace fiercely. “Don’t cry, Mummy. You don’t need to be sad anymore. We’re together now, and everything is alright, I keep _telling_ you.” Helena’s eyes flew open at the indignant tone of the last words, and her breath left her in a laugh. Christina beamed back at her. “See? Much better.”

Helena tried to glower at her. “Cheek,” she tried to chide, but it came out as more of a hiccup. She hugged Christina again, as hard as she could, then inclined her head towards Siruya. “We should apologize for spoiling the storytelling,” she declared.

“Oh I think the story is done,” Siruya shrugged and smiled. 

“You never said that we’d live happily ever after,” Christina complained.

“Well, ever after hasn’t happened yet,” Siruya pointed out. “I don’t doubt you will, but we’ll just have to wait and see, hm?”

“Righty-ho,” Christina agreed with another beaming smile. “Can I show you my room now, Mummy?”

-_-_-

Helena woke with a start. Her arms tightened reflexively around a small, warm, sleeping body in her arms. As her thoughts fought to make sense of both nightmare and physical sensations, she relaxed slowly. She had fallen asleep in Christina’s bed. After her daughter had told her about everything she had done on Themyscira, Christina had demanded – imperious as usual – that her mother bring her up to speed about what she had done in London. Then she had promptly fallen asleep five minutes into Helena’s account. Helena had followed her into Morpheus’ arms a while later, and then had dreamed – she did not remember clearly what she had dreamed, and she did not particularly mind that fact. 

Helena pressed a kiss onto Christina’s curls. Then she dashed impatient fingers across her cheeks. It was disconcerting to realize that she was not crying any less now that she knew that her daughter was alive. Surely she had no reason to cry anymore? 

A tall figure appeared in the doorway and beckoned to Helena. Siruya – even only illuminated by the small rush lamp the chronicler was carrying, the colors of her garment shone. Helena carefully disentangled her limbs and got up from her daughter’s bed. Siruya led her not to the sitting room, but the opposite way down the hallway. She opened a door, beckoned again, and Helena followed her through her bedroom to a small window that overlooked the outside of the keep. 

It was the same view that Diana had pointed out to her after seeing Penelope, Helena realized. The sky was clear now, but as it was night, again there was no sunlight to refract in the water and turn it blue. Black below, white cliffs above, and the merest hint of dark green in the conifers that grew atop the rocks. 

Helena started slightly when arms wrapped themselves around her from behind. Then she relaxed into Siruya’s embrace, even leaning against the slightly taller woman.

They stood like that for a long moment. Then Helena cleared her throat and said, “Thank you for giving Christina a home.”

She felt Siruya’s nod behind her. “It was my pleasure,” the chronicler said. “Your daughter is very much like you. We became friends quickly.”

Helena shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, and Siruya released her immediately. Helena turned around to face her. “Is it… disconcerting for you?” she asked. “The friendship between you and me? When you have never seen me before, except for your memories of a different time thread?”

Siruya smiled and shook her head. “I did embrace you just now, didn’t I?” she replied. “Those memories are – to me at least – just as real as any other recollections I have, especially after we figured out why we have them. When Diana greeted you when you landed – did she give you the impression she was seeing you for the first time?” 

Helena shook her head mutely. Then she frowned and asked, “Does all of Themyscira know this story?”

Siruya smiled apologetically. “Yes,” she said, “they do. Christina is the first child to live here since Diana was her age, and the first Child of Man to stay here for more than just a couple of weeks. Her story ran across the island like wild horses. Subsequently, the story of our memories, and of _Argion_ , did the same.” Her smile turned wry. “There aren’t many secrets on Themyscira.”

“I see.”

“That might make your return easier, would it not?” Siruya asked. “Or as easy as it would have been in that other time thread.”

Helena pondered that for a moment, then nodded. “I certainly don’t want to go through a Lasso-aided interrogation again,” she said. “I won’t, will I?”

“I assume you will not,” Siruya said. “From what I’ve heard, the queen and the general only want to go over what you brought with you, nothing else.”

“Ah. Yes.” Helena nodded, rolling her eyes even though she understood the reasoning behind the caution. She chuckled. “In my haste to get everything that I wanted to bring with me, I completely forgot that Christina’s birthday is tomorrow. I should have brought-” she abandoned the thought, balling her hands into fists. “She’s grown so tall,” she whispered. “I’ve missed almost a year of her life, and I’ll never regain that.”

Siruya took a step closer to Helena, reached out and cupped Helena’s neck, gently pulling the other woman forward until their foreheads touched. “While that is true, you will have time aplenty to spend with her.” She sounded sad and wistful, and for a moment, Helena wondered why. Then it hit her.

“Astarte,” Helena said and leaned back to look at Siruya, her mouth suddenly dry. “Siruya, I’m so-”

“Shh,” Siruya said, putting a finger on Helena’s mouth. “I don’t begrudge or envy you your happiness, my friend.” She smiled a small smile. “I have often wondered what I’d do if Astarte were returned to me. And as I’ve told you,” she chuckled and rolled her eyes, “in my memories at least – I’ve long resolved to live my life in such a way that I can tell Astarte many stories when I see her in the Great Below. It is pointless to hope that she will come back to life. It is not pointless to rejoice for you and Christina, on the contrary. So I do this, but will not do the other.”

A tear slipped from Helena’s brimming eyes. She did not know how to reply to Siruya’s words. ‘Thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry’, all of these expressions were far too small to convey her meaning. Again, she tried to wrangle her thoughts into order. Finally, she reached for Siruya’s hand and said, “I cannot find words to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done. You were a friend to me in my grief, and you were a friend to my daughter in her need. I hope you’ll continue to be our friend in our happiness.” 

The smile that blossomed on Siruya’s face was watery but true. “I would like that very much,” she said. “You and Christina are welcome to stay if you want – tonight, certainly-” both of them turned to look at the wall that Siruya’s bedroom shared with Christina’s room at the same time, and they shared a smile at the coincidence, “- but even after that, as long as you like. There are many places for a newcomer to choose to live in, and while you and Christina find one, my home is your home.” She bowed slightly, then looked around at her bedroom illuminated by lamp light and laughed softly. “Now that I come to think of it, my bringing you here might be misconstrued quite easily.” Siruya blushed so deeply that it was visible even in the moonlight from the window. “I… I did not mean…”

Helena felt her eyebrow rise almost of its own accord, and saw Siruya drop her eyes and hang her head. And suddenly, as if a gust of wind had blown a pile of leaves apart only to reassemble them in a new way, as if a cloud withdrawing from the sun shed new light across familiar vistas, Helena saw Siruya’s features with new eyes. Even in the dim light of moon and lamp, she was stunningly beautiful. Had she not talked about being valued for more than her beauty here on Themyscira? Helena certainly did value her for more than just a pretty face – but she also realized, even tired as she was, that said face was very pretty indeed. Even more than that, though, the chronicler had a quick, sharp mind, a warm sense of humor, and a deep understanding and empathy for how people worked. 

They had come to be friends – regardless in which time thread, Helena thought. This woman, gorgeous in more ways than simple physical beauty, had sought Helena out again and again, had obviously enjoyed Helena’s company, had caused Helena’s heart to open up and take refuge in Siruya’s unconditional affection. More than that, Siruya had taken in and befriended Christina – and now she was blushing; over what exactly? Helena realized that she was staring, and quickly blinked, schooling her features into a simple, friendly, and frankly tired smile. 

“Siruya, there is no harm done,” she reassured the other woman. She paused for a moment, trying to find the right words – flirting with a woman in London had not been easy, but she had managed easily and often. Flirting here on Themyscira, where women held hands and kissed quite openly, certainly needed a different approach. “I’m most certainly not scandalized by the idea of being in a woman’s bedroom,” she said honestly. “I’ve been in a few that weren’t mine, and not to admire the view. Not the view out of the window, at any rate,” she added, a bit of spark reappearing in her smile.

It was mirrored in the sudden dancing delight in Siruya’s eyes. The chronicler raised her chin and smiled. “That is good to know,” she said. Then she laughed. “I was about to offer you to sleep with me-” 

Helena, caught in the middle of a yawn, choked and started coughing. 

Siruya’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh! Oh dear! Not that way – I didn’t mean it that way. Sleep – with me – in my bed. As a guest, a friend.” She pointed to the door, almost frantically trying to get her meaning across. “If… I mean… there are enough cushions in the sitting room to sleep on-”

Helena, whose cough had evolved into a laugh about five words into Siruya’s explanation, decided it was time to clear things up on her part. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said and caught Siruya’s hand. “Everything is alright,” she repeated Christina’s mantra. “It’s my language that is sometimes woefully lacking in precision.” She pulled Siruya’s hand up and breathed a kiss across her knuckles. “Let me be honest: while I would be absolutely available for the other kind of sleeping with you, right now I’m looking forward to the kind where we both get into bed and close our eyes and wake up eight hours from now-”

“Gods willing,” Siruya interjected. Her eyes were sparkling again.

“-with any luck,” Helena went on without missing a beat, “and treat ourselves and Christina to breakfast in bed. And since I’m imposing upon you, I shall volunteer to go down to the kitchen and fetch said breakfast.”

Siruya nodded solemnly, but the spark in her eyes had not vanished. “It shall be so,” she declared. 

A few minutes later, Helena found herself in another woman’s bed, in another woman’s arms, her heart more at peace than it had been for almost a year. A while later, she woke when she heard small feet tapping towards them, almost rose when she felt the bed dip under an eight- she corrected herself: nine-year-old’s body, but decided to simply welcome her daughter into her arms and go on sleeping.


	12. Chapter 12

“Please state the contents of this chest.” Penelope pointed towards the first of many wooden boxes that lined the newly erected tent. 

“I brought a manifest,” Helena said, feeling a little stubborn. Why would the Amazons not simply check the boxes’ contents against the manifest? Why did she have to be away from her Christina?

“We are aware of that,” Queen Hippolyta said. “Nevertheless, I want to hear from you what you brought and why you brought it.”

Helena inhaled deeply. “Righty-ho then,” she mumbled and stepped towards the indicated chest. “This chest holds electrical batteries,” she said. “I brought several different kinds, all safely packed of course, to see which one would work best for the intended purpose.” She threw General Antiope a sidelong glance. The general had a stake in the purpose, after all; especially after what she had said yesterday, she might be an ally in helping Helena deal with this quicker rather than slower. “These three boxes,” she said, indicating the crates next to the first, “hold individual parts necessary to build these and other kinds of batteries, in case more experimenting and fine-tuning is needed.”

The queen inclined her head. “That is very thoughtful,” she conceded. “Continue, please.”

“This crate here and the two next to it,” Helena pointed further down the line, “are for you, your Majesty, and for the chronicler.” She turned slightly to find Siruya’s eyes for a moment, then returned her gaze to the queen and smiled a little acerbically. “They hold books and texts with all that the World of Man thinks they know about the Amazons.” A murmur ran through the Amazons present in the tent, and Helena knew the fact would scatter across the island much faster than the actual texts would. “Given that all of these books were written by male scholars, I don’t doubt that reading them will be… amusing, if not informative.” She bowed slightly. “Please accept these as a gift and as an apology for me keeping _Argion_ as long as I did.”

“Well said,” Penelope murmured behind Helena, who fought off a grin. 

“As a matter of fact,” Helena turned to the historian, “the next three crates are for you, if her Majesty agrees. I realize that you,” she bowed again towards the queen, “and the Senate will have to decide if you want to keep them or if they are too dangerous for Themyscira. “Another murmur ran through the half-dozen of women. Both Queen Hippolyta and Antiope narrowed their eyes. “They are seeds,” Helena explained quickly. “Seeds and cuttings of plants that might grow here.”

“Including tea?” Diana asked from behind Helena, and this time, Helena did not bother to hide her smile. 

“Yes,” she said, “including tea, both from India and from China, for Epione.”

“I agree with Helena Wells that we should indeed carefully debate if we want to make use of these,” Penelope said. “Oeone knows more about these things, of course, but even I know that invasive plants can overrun native plants if the gardener is not careful.”

Helena nodded immediately. “That is why, as you can see, all these crates are fully sealed with wax,” she pointed out. “They are double-sealed inside of this outer layer, too. If you decide not to use them, you can simply burn the crates. The world will not miss them.” Smiling again, she added, “I did bring along loose leaf tea, of course. It is among these crates,” she pointed to a number of crates that had her initials on them, “which hold other things that I brought for myself – tools and equipment for my work, as well as some personal items for Christina and me. I brought my favorite books, as well.” A motion, seen from the corners of her eyes, made her turn to that side. Diana’s head was up, her eyes wide and voracious. “I’m happy to lend them to anyone who wishes to read them. If you would like to read them first,” she turned back to the queen, “in order to decide if they’re suitable for other Amazons-” 

“I do not,” Queen Hippolyta snorted. “I am not that kind of ruler, Helena Wells.”

“Noted,” Helena said quickly. “These two crates are equally dangerous – they are intended for General Antiope.” She inclined her head towards the general. “They are texts and treatises on tactics to illustrate how the Art of War,” she snorted slightly at the expression, “has advanced, and…” she breathed deeply. “And a few examples of modern weaponry.” Her expression darkened. “I wasn’t sure if I should bring these,” she continued over the renewed murmur of the Amazons in the background. “If you want to burn them too, be my guest.”

“We will not,” Antiope said tersely. “It is good to be prepared. Tactics and theory are useless if you don’t have the actual weapon to train with or guard against. We shall handle them with the appropriate safety precautions, but we will handle them.” For a moment, there was a staring contest between the queen and her general, then Hippolyta, her frown as severe as Helena’s, looked away.

Helena cleared her throat and pointed to the last charge of crates. “Lastly, these chests are for Siruya, and this one is for Diana.”

“Gifts?” Diana exclaimed happily. 

Helena nodded. “For the two women who befriended me and helped me in my grief,” she said. “If you’re willing, I’m certain Penelope can help you duplicate them so that you can share the things I brought with others, but I intended them for you and Siruya first and foremost.” Looking at the queen again, she pointed at Diana’s box. “Would you like me to state what’s in them, or shall it be a surprise for the recipients?” she asked with a smile. “I had intended the latter, of course, but if you ask me to, I will reveal the contents.”

“I do not,” the queen repeated. “I am not that kind of mother, either.” She smiled. “The gifts you bring are thoughtful, Helena Wells, and well received. I thank you for them, and for your explanations.” Her smile grew slightly pointed. “And for returning _Argion_ , of course.”

Helena bowed for the first time. “Allow me to apologize for that again, your Majesty.”

Queen Hippolyta waved a hand. “It is forgiven,” she said. “We had no need of _Argion_ while she was gone, so no harm was done.” This time when she smiled, it was fond and open-hearted. “I imagine you are impatient to return to your daughter,” she said. “By all means do so. You have joined her and Siruya in the chronicler’s quarters, I presume?”

“For the time being,” Helena confirmed, and saw Siruya’s nod from the corners of her eyes. It had only been for last night, after all, and beyond Siruya’s invitation, they had not talked about how things would proceed. 

Queen Hippolyta nodded, catching the unvoiced caveat. “I understand. Nevertheless, I shall have your crates and the ones intended for Siruya brought up to those rooms.” She nodded regally at Helena, who caught the unvoiced dismissal, bowed, and left.

-_-_-

“Mummy!” Christina flew into her arms when Helena and Siruya walked through the door to Siruya’s quarters. “That was fast! What did the queen ask you? What did you tell her? Did you see Diana, too? Did you know that she is a princess, and the next youngest person after me? Did you remember that it’s my birthday today?”

Helena laughed as she whirled Christina around once. “You’re getting too heavy for this,” she winced, “much though it pains me to say this.” She eyed her daughter’s body once more. “You have grown so much,” she sighed. Siruya touched Helena’s shoulder in passing as she went ahead to the sitting room – the queen had indeed given orders to bring the chests up as quickly as possible, and they needed to make space for them.

“I know, Mother.” Christina’s voice was equally patient and annoyed. “Two and three quarter inches. We measured. Three times.” Then her face brightened. “Did you bring me anything for my birthday?” she asked.

“Am I not gift enough?” Helena quipped. Truth be told, she _had_ thought about this unhappy fact all the way from the beach to the keep. 

Christina scrunched up her nose. “I guess,” she said. “But I really would have liked hot chocolate and waffles, you know.” She dropped her voice to a shocked whisper. “They don’t have chocolate here, Mummy. None at all!” 

“No!” In mock outrage, Helena pressed her hand to her chest. She _had_ brought powdered chocolate – it was in Diana’s crate, along with an assortment of other sweets. She would have to ask Diana if she could duplicate the box of cocoa for Christina.

As if on cue, someone knocked on the door – someone who turned out to be the very Amazon Helena had been thinking about.

“Diana!” Christina ran towards the young woman and threw herself into Diana’s arms. The Amazon lifted her effortlessly, and Helena sighed, instantly envious. 

“Hello Christina,” Diana greeted the child with a kiss to her cheek. “And hello again, Helena. Is this a good moment?”

“You couldn’t have picked a better one,” Helena replied truthfully. 

“Good,” Diana said with a smile and set Christina down amidst protests. “I’m sorry, birthday bird, I have to carry these boxes in here so that we can open them.”

“Presents!” Christina cried out happily and followed Diana out of the door. “You _did_ bring presents for my birthday, Mummy!”

“As a matter of fact,” Helena began, her ears warming in embarrassment, “these crates are-”

“Presents for all three of us,” Diana cut in, catching on to Helena’s plight. “This box is for you and me, and these are Siruya’s.”

Christina’s eyes grew wide. “Is it your birthday too?” she squealed in delight. 

Diana grinned at her. “No, not today. I think your mother just wanted to bring us something from her journey,” she said. 

“Oh! Yes,” Christina nodded avidly, “she brought me a doll from India once.” She turned to her mother. “Did you bring Aashi with you? Is she in one of those boxes? Those _are_ your boxes, aren’t they?” She pointed to the rest of the crates that Diana had not indicated.

When she had packed the things she would bring to Themyscira, Helena had indeed brought her daughter’s three favorite dolls with her, Aashi among them. It had been the smallest of chances that she would find Christina here, but if she did, she had to bring Christina’s favorite things with her. They had been mementos, she thought with a hitch to her smile. Now they were going to be playthings again. She nodded, and Christina bounced and clapped her hands with joy. 

“I’ll help you carry,” Christina offered to Diana, and gamely worked her fingers under one corner of the closest crate.

“Righty-ho,” Diana said. When she picked up the crate in such a way that it seemed that Christina was indeed helping, Helena’s heart swelled to bursting. Diana could have easily carried three crates at once with Christina sat atop them, but she took the time and effort to make Christina feel helpful. Nothing could have endeared her to Helena more.

The pair negotiated its way past the door and past Siruya, and vanished into the sitting room. Siruya raised her eyebrows at Helena. “Shall we?” she asked, nodding to the other boxes sitting in the outer hallway.

It took a while, but after twenty minutes, ten of which were spent waiting for Christina to return from the kitchens with a lunch basket, they were all sat around the low table in Siruya’s sitting room. 

“I’ve finished eating,” Christina announced, her last bite of grilled fish barely down. “Now may we open presents?”

“Yes, we may,” Helena said, suppressing a laugh. Diana looked just as impatient, even though she was hiding it better. Even Siruya had cast a few sidelong glances at the crates stacked along the wall. 

“Siruya, you go first,” Christina decreed. “You have more boxes to open.” Happy that her child had never been the jealous kind, Helena nodded encouragingly towards Siruya, her own excitement rising. 

Siruya caught Helena’s eye and pointed at one of the crates. “This one?” she asked. “Is there an order in which these should be opened?”

Helena looked at the number on the crate’s side and quickly went through the manifest in her mind. She smiled. “This one will do just fine,” she said. 

Siruya pulled it over to her seat and looked at the spring latches for a moment, figuring out how to open them. Then she pulled the tab of one and grinned excitedly as it released. The others soon followed, and Siruya removed the lid and the top layer of wood shavings. The chronicler took out a dark green metal box about a foot long, three inches tall and ten inches wide, with a bronze-colored crest printed on its top. Christina gasped when she realized what the box held, and Helena brought her finger to her lips, not wanting to spoil Siruya’s surprise. Christina nodded, eyes gleaming. 

Siruya opened the box and looked inside. “Oh my…” she breathed. A rainbow of colors lay before her eyes, or rather two dozen hues from the red, orange and yellow end of the rainbow, immobilized and encased in wood and sharpened to a point. 

“We call them colored pencils,” Helena said softly. 

“There’s a second layer underneath, you know. You can draw with them,” Christina added excitedly. “I can show you how!” She turned to her mother. “Mummy, did you bring me some, too?”

Helena frowned. “That was not a very polite question, Christina,” she said. “ _You_ told Siruya to go first, so you’ll have to wait to find out what I brought you. And when someone receives something that you admire very much, it is bad manners to ask if you can get the same thing. You take attention from their enjoyment and make the moment about you, not them.” She shook her head. “Please do not do that.”

Christina hung her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. 

“Don’t tell me – tell Siruya,” Helena directed. 

“I’m sorry, Siruya,” Christina said. “I am really happy for you that you got these as a present.”

“Apology accepted,” Siruya said with a smile. “And I _would_ like you to show me how to draw with them one day.”

“Okay!” And that quick, a beaming smile was back on Christina’s face. It stayed on while Siruya found a box of polygrade pencils, a set each of watercolors and oil paints with corresponding paint brushes and other miscellaneous equipment, and a stack of several sheets of different kinds of paper. Each item was greeted with profound enthusiasm and set aside reverentially.

From the second crate, Siruya then pulled a well-sealed crate that, when opened, revealed a multitude of small stoppered bottles, some containing liquids, others containing powders, all in many shades as well. 

“These are dyes for different kinds of fabric,” Helena explained. “There should be a manual that details how to use them, too.”

Siruya nodded and held up a booklet. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathless with wonder. Helena thought she had never looked more beautiful. Siruya set the dyes back into the crate with utmost care. Then she leaned over to Helena and hugged her fiercely. She took in a shuddering breath and released it with a whispered, “Thank you.”

Helena hugged her back equally tightly. “You are very welcome,” she whispered back. 

There were generously large fabric samples in this crate and the next, two bolts each – undyed as well as bleached as white as that fabric would go. “This is the finest knitting I ever saw,” Siruya exclaimed over a bolt of jersey. “Does man breed spiders that knit?”

Helena laughed. “No,” she replied, “man builds machines that knit.”

“Incredible,” Siruya marveled. 

When the time came to open Diana’s crate, Christina was beyond excited. Helena tried to catch Diana’s eyes to at least cast her an apologetic look, but the young Amazon was as focused as an archer. 

“May I?” Christina bounced in her seat, pointing at the latches. 

“Two for you, two for me?” Diana suggested, and Christina nodded immediately. Together, they opened the latches; together, they discarded the lid and wood shavings. 

Then Christina cried out in glee. “Chocolate!” She reached into the crate and triumphantly held up the metal tin of hot cocoa powder. 

“Candy!” Diana shouted equally delighted as she held aloft a glass jar full of the jewel-like confectionery. “This is candy, isn’t it? Oh, you remembered!” And she, too, leaned over to crush Helena’s ribs in a hug. “But what is chocolate, Christina?”

Helena half-listened to her daughter describe the wonder that was a mug of hot cocoa, and the miracle that was a bar of chocolate, and the many forms and shapes that chocolate could be pressed into, and the many ingredients that paired so well with the sweet confection. She was quite content to simply look at her daughter; she could have listened to her go on about anything under the sun for days. 

Both child and Amazon gasped and exclaimed in delight as they dug their way further into the crate. 

“Did you bring anything but sweets for Diana?” Siruya asked in a whisper while they both watched the excavation. 

Helena shook her head. “Her interest is in fighting. There is little that I can contribute to that. So I went with confectionery instead.” Seeing Christina tug at the wrapper of a chocolate bar, she called out, “Christina, please wait with that. The Amazons have a device that duplicates things, but that device needs a sample to work from. So if you can restrain yourself now…”

“I can have as many of these as I want?” Christina asked in stunned disbelief.

Helena laughed out loud. “Nice try, but no – but you can have more than this one for the rest of your life, and others can have them, too.” 

“Oh.” There was no mistaking the disappointment and subsequent resignation on her daughter’s face. “That’s alright, I suppose.”

Diana nudged Christina’s side. “No chocolate today, but chocolate for the rest of your life,” she said. “That seems like a fair trade, doesn’t it?”

“I guess.” With a heartfelt sigh, Christina set the chocolate bar back in the crate, right next to the tin of cocoa powder. Then her face brightened. “Does the sample need to be a sealed container?” When Helena shook her head, she turned to Siruya. “Do you have cow’s milk, or only goat and cheese?” When Siruya confirmed that Themyscira did indeed have cow’s milk, Christina addressed Helena again. “May we have hot chocolate, Mummy? Please?” She clutched her hands together and gave her mother a pleading look. “Think how exciting this will be for Diana and Siruya!”

Helena laughed again and nodded. “Yes, you may have hot chocolate. Why don’t you and Diana head to the kitchen and help the head cook to figure out how to make it?” As the two clambered up and headed to the door, Helena turned to Siruya. “These two will be the worst partners in crime this island has ever seen.”

“No doubt,” Siruya replied. “It will take much of our attention to rein them in.”

“Not all of it, though,” Helena murmured, concentrating said attention on Siruya’s smiling lips. 

“Not all of it,” Siruya agreed, leaning closer. 

Their kiss was short, but it was sweeter than hot chocolate, more promising than a blank sheet of paper with a box of colored pencils next to it, and after it, the future looked brighter than any dye that man could make.


End file.
